CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE^NCOMB 
 OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT 
 FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY 
 
 HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022014215 
 
The ■JXCetbod of 
 HENRY JAMES 
 
 55y "Joseph Warren '^each 
 
 ^Associate 'Professor of English 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA 
 
 NEW HAVEN 
 YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 
 
 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 MDCCCC^VIII, 
 
Copyright, 1918 
 By Yale University Press 
 
 First published. January, 1918 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Explanations 1 
 
 Part On^: The Method 9 
 
 fy'I. Idea 11 
 
 II. Picture 24 
 
 III Revelation"^ 38 
 
 IV. Suspense^ 50 
 
 ^/V. Point of Viev<^ 56 
 
 VI. Dialc^ue ^ 72 
 
 VII. Drama " 87 
 
 VIII. Eliminations "T' 98 
 
 IX. Tone IHr 
 
 X.^ Romance 120 
 
 XI. Ethics 13t~ 
 
 The Figure in the Carpet 145 
 
 Part Two: Towards a Method 163 
 
 I. Obscure Beginnings 165 
 
 II. Early Prime: (a) Roderick Hudson; 
 (b) The American; j(c) The Portrait 
 of a Lady; (d) The Princess Casamas- 
 
 sitna; (e) The Tragic Muse . . . 191 
 
 III. Non-canonical: (a) Confidence, The 
 Bostonians, The Europeans; (b) Wash- 
 ington Square 221 
 
 IV. Achievement : The Spoils of Poynton . 233 
 
vi Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 V. Technical Exercises : (a) What Maisie 
 Knew; (b) The Awkward Age; (c) 
 The Outcry; (d) The Sacred Fount . 237 
 VI. Full Prime: (a) The Wings of the 
 Dove; (b) The Golden Bowl; (c) The 
 Ambassadors 355 
 
 Characters 271 
 
 Bibliographical Note 272 
 
 Index 277 
 
THE METHOD OF HENRY JAMES 
 
EXPLANATIONS 
 
 It is natural that books should multiply on the subject 
 of Henry James. His art of stoiy-telling is so conscious 
 and deliberate that it offers itself unusually well to 
 critical examination. There is indeed in his work a 
 quite sufficient measure of that happy inspiration which 
 is beyond all analysis and subject to no principle. But 
 his most striding peculiarity, in contrast to English novel- 
 ists in general, is the prominence in his wo rk of studie d 
 art. Not that the art obtrudes itselfTSiduly upon tTie' 
 attention of the reader. On the contrary: it is uncom- 
 monly well-bred and self-effacing. But for all that, the 
 mere skill of the craftsman is more essential to the"^ 
 effectiveness of his work than is the case, for example, 
 with Hardy or Meredith, in later times with Mr. Bennett 
 or Mr. Wells, or in earlier times with Thackeray, Scott 
 or Fielding. These novelists, some of them so great, are 
 taken up to such an extent with their material and their 
 attitude towards it, as to have comparatively little atten- 
 tion left for the niceties of art in the disposition of it. 
 They may be likened to those early romantic composers 
 whose devotion is so singly given to the creation and 
 development of melody. James bears relation to the 
 more sophisticated composers of his own day in whose 
 work melody has become subordinate to harmony, in 
 which the effect of the whole is so largely dependent on 
 the relations of part to part, and in which there is so 
 much wider range for the exercise of the artist's cunning. 
 Whether this "sophistication," in musical or literary art, 
 may not be the sign of degeneration from the noble sim- 
 
The Method of Henry James 
 
 plicity of the old masters, is of course an open question. 
 I prefer the less contentious position that admits of 
 admiration for beauties of either kind. 
 
 A special invitation to the study of James is found 
 in what he has written himself about the art of fiction, 
 above all in the prefaces to the New York edition of his 
 novels and tales.^ No writer of fiction, no literary artist 
 in any genre, has ever told us so distinctly, and at such 
 length, what he was trying to do. And no artist has ever 
 explained to the world so candidly how far and in what 
 respects he succeeded in realizing his intentions. It need 
 not be inferred from this, however, that James is the 
 one artist least in need of explaining by others. These 
 prefaces were written since the year 1906, and in that 
 ultimate style of Mr. James's which has been the amaze- 
 ment and the amusement of the "vulgar" in all his latest 
 work. Deeply interesting as they are, few but profes- 
 sional students would have the hardihood and pertinacity 
 to make their way through these explanatory reviews 
 distributed over twenty-four volumes. It remains for 
 the student to collect and set in order these scattered 
 considerations, to view them in connection with the stories 
 themselves, and, from the whole, to put together some 
 connected account of the aims and method of our author. 
 
 It should be observed that Mr. James included in the 
 New York edition hardly more than half his wcJrk. In 
 consequence, we have no comment of his own on novels 
 so important in the history of his development as "Wash- 
 
 1 Announcement is made, when this study is already far ad- 
 vanced in the process of printing, of two unfinished novels of 
 James, "The Ivory Tower" and "The Sense of the Past," together 
 with the author's preliminary plans and sketches for the com- 
 pletion of the books, documents which should throw yet fuller 
 light on his methods of composition. 
 
Explanations 
 
 ington Square," "The Bostonians" and "The Sacred 
 Fount." There comes up in this connection the interesting 
 question of why certain stories were included in this col- 
 lection of his work and why certain others were left out. 
 And the general question starts a dozen special inquiries 
 to which the author has not himself made explicit answer, 
 and some of which he has not even broached. And while, 
 moreover, it is highly interesting and of real importance, 
 to see any artist as he sees himself, we are naturally 
 most concerned with the way he appears to us. 
 
 In this study we shall be concerned almost exclusively 
 with the novels, that is, with stories long enough to have 
 made more than four or five installments in serial publica- 
 tion. This mechanical definition is practically the only 
 means 'available for distinguishing between his novels 
 and his "tales." Mr. James seems not to have conceived 
 the "short story" in the rigorous fashion now prevailing, 
 and there is little essential difference in technique between 
 his short and his long stories. His "contest' all tend to 
 become "nouvelles." There is but a step, and that a 
 matter of length, from "The Real Thing" to "Daisy 
 Miller," one step from "Daisy Miller" to "The Spoils 
 of Poynton," and but one more from "The Spoils of 
 Poynton" to "The American." "Daisy Miller" we may 
 call a tale, "The Spoils of Poynton" a novel. And the 
 novels of James are more interesting than his tales. 
 While he has done many brilliant things in the briefer 
 form? his most significant work is in the more extended 
 narrative. The reason for this should appear in the 
 course of our discussion.^ It is enough to note in passing 
 that, while the tale may be the natural instrument of any 
 
 2 See, for example, p. 70 ; but compare also the fourth chapter 
 of Part Two. 
 
The Method of Henry James 
 
 writer whose forte is sharpness of outline, liveliness in 
 ren dering the su rface of life, the novel is more congenial 
 to one whose bent is for the fine stroke, the rich effect, 
 and who revels in the leisurely development of character 
 from within . " ~~ 
 
 In giving any description of the novels of James, one 
 must take into account considerable variations according 
 to the date of composition. In order not to complicate 
 matters, I shall postpone to the second part of the study 
 what is a subject of special interest in itself, the evolution 
 of his method, the gradual process by which he assumed 
 the technique that is most characteristic of him. It will 
 then appear that his writing falls into two main periods, 
 leaving out of account the stories written before 1875, 
 the year in which the young author found himself in 
 "Roderick Hudson."* The period of his early prime is 
 one of fourteen years, ending with the publication in 
 1889 of "The Tragic Muse."* These years brought to 
 light several great novels, notably "The Portrait of a 
 Lady" and "The Princess Casamassima," as well as 
 several inferior ones, such as "Confidence" and "The 
 Europeans." After this period James seems to have 
 intermitted the writing of novels for more than half a 
 decade. The period of maturity begins in 1896 with "The 
 Spoils of Poynton" and continues down to 1904, the date 
 of "The Golden Bowl." "The Outcry" (1911) must 
 stand by itself as a kind of belated exercise in technique. 
 
 The second part of our study will give particular atten- 
 tion to the product of the early period, during which the 
 story-teller was still making excursions and explorations. 
 In the first part I shall endeavor to give an account of 
 the method as it was finally worked out, with little regard 
 
 3 In each case I give the date of appearance in magazine. 
 
Explanations 
 
 to exceptions and experiments. My illustrations will 
 therefore be drawn more often in this part from the work 
 of the later period. 
 
 For it is the latest novels of James that are most 
 distinctive. His earlier novels show more likeness to 
 the work of his contemporaries and predecessors in 
 English fiction. It is perhaps largely on this account 
 that so many of his lovers prefer him in the earlier phase. 
 And they may be justified in their preference. It is just 
 possible that "Roderick Hudson" is a greater book than 
 "The Spoils of Poynton," that "The Tragic Muse" is 
 greater than "The Golden Bowl." But there can be little 
 doubt that there is more of James in "The Spoils" and 
 "The Golden Bowl." There is no doubt at all that he 
 takes greater satisfaction himself in the later works, and 
 that he more often achieves in them the thing at which 
 he was always more or less consciously aiming. Aside 
 from his explicit statements, we have the further evi- 
 dence of his rejections. Of the seven novels which he 
 refused admission to the collective edition, all but one 
 display the earlier technique in marked degree.* The 
 artist who was unwilling to revive "The Bostonians" was 
 an artist who took more pleasure in "The Wings of the 
 Dove" than in "The American." If we are justified in 
 describing "The Princess Casamassima" as of all the 
 earlier novels the one most characteristic of its author, 
 this is because it anticipates most nearly the technique 
 of "The Ambassadors," which he regards as "quite the 
 best, 'all round,' of his productions."" 
 
 It will not do to put the later novels out of court on 
 the ground of mannerism as we do the latest poems of 
 
 * The exception was "The Sacred Fount." For this, see Part 
 Two, Oiap. V. 
 
 " Preface to "The Ambassadors," Vol. XXI, p. vii. 
 
The Method of Henry James 
 
 Browning. The latest novels of James are carefully 
 pla nned works of a rt. They are doubtless often some- 
 what overdone; there is a certain miscalculation of the 
 effect of minute detail. But their peculiarities are not in 
 general properly to be described as mannerisms. They 
 derive too directly from the original plan of the work, 
 and are too essential to its execution. A mannerism is an 
 excrescence upon a work of art; and the upshot of our 
 whole study will be to show the growing impatience of 
 James, as he proceeds, with anything that obscures the 
 rigorous simplicity of design.® 
 
 * In any case one can hardly put the blame for one's dislike 
 upon the style. We shall have little occasion in this study to 
 discuss the style of James, to consider in detail the vocabulary, 
 the turn of the phrase, the structure of the sentence. But there 
 is one word that may be said in passing. The style of the later 
 novels is not so markedly different from that of the earlier ones 
 as is sometimes supposed; and a close study of alterations made 
 by James in the early stories in revising them for the collective 
 edition shows that the direction taken by his style in its evolu- 
 tion was not, in these cases, towards the difficult and the precious. 
 In dialogue there is a tendency in the later work towards greater 
 informality, towards a truly colloquial manner; in characteriza- 
 tion, towards greater exactness. What may be called the density 
 of the style in the narrative passages must be referred to the 
 uncommonly detailed reflection of the thought of his characters, 
 of characters intensely self-conscious. Here of course lies the 
 offense. But the words of James are the suitable dress of his 
 subject-matter. And his style is pretty well kept in order, in all 
 his narratives, by the jealous discipline of the story itself. If so 
 much cannot be said of his interviews and prefaces, his reminis- 
 cences and books of personal observation, that is partly because 
 he has in these no story — no strict design — ^to keep him in order : 
 there is nothing to prevent his "letting himself go." In refer- 
 ence to the novels, if we are to complain of eccentricity, it is 
 eccentricity not so much in the manner of expression as in the 
 manner of thought. But before complaining we must under- 
 stand. 
 
Explanations 
 
 It would be more logical to condemn the whole under- 
 taking of James as contrary to the spirit and inherent 
 method of the novel, and as foredoomed to failure. The 
 following study offers plentiful material for such an 
 interpretation, especially in the chapters on "Revelation," 
 "Dialogue" and "Eliminations." In that case the merit 
 of the novels would be practically in inverse ratio to the 
 author's success in carrying out his program, and the 
 best stories would certainly be found in the earlier period. 
 I can find no fault with such an interpretation except that 
 it does not agree with my own impressions and prefer- 
 ences. 
 
 It may be inferred from this program that I am not 
 undertaking an authoritative appraisal of the work of 
 Henry James. I shall make little formal attempt to grade 
 his stories in order of permanent greatness. Still less 
 shall I attempt to determine his exact order of merit 
 among novelists. These are exercises for posterity,^ 
 matters that somehow insist on getting themselves deter- 
 mined without much regard for the opinion of contem- 
 porary critics. There is of course an implied judgment 
 in the singling out of a writer for such extended study. 
 Any novelist so compelling to serious consideration, any 
 art so fascinating as this, must have a very high order 
 of merit. In any time it is high praise for a work of art 
 to call it a work of notable distinction. Assuming so 
 much for the work of James, our aim is to make out its 
 peculiar character. We are to look for the special ideal 
 
 ^ The discerning reader may infer from certain signs that this 
 study was largely made during the first year of the War, while 
 Mr. James was still living; and the critical reader will appreciate 
 my reluctance to assume even yet the authoritative manner of 
 "posterity." 
 
8 The Method of Henry James 
 
 and method of this story-teller, and to estimate the degree 
 in which this method is applied in the several stories, 
 the success with which they realize this idealTj If this is 
 not so much criticism as interpretation, it should be at 
 least a long first step towards criticism. 
 
 NOTE 
 
 References to the novels and tales of James, are, so far as 
 possible, to the "New York" edition, Scribners, 1907-1909, with 
 the number of the volume in that set. In the case of certain 
 tales not included in the New York edition, reference is made, 
 to the magazine in which the story first appeared. References 
 to novels not included are to the following editions: "Watch 
 and Ward," Houghton Mifflin, 1887; "The Europeans," 9th ed., 
 Houghton Mifflin; "Washington Square," Harpers, 1881; "The 
 Bostonians," Macmillan, 1886; "The Other House," Macmillan, 
 1896; "The Sacred Fount," Scribners, 1901; "The Outcry," 
 Scribners, 1911. 
 
PART ONE: THE METHOD 
 
I 
 
 IDEA 
 
 The work of James is of course not an isolated phe- 
 nomenon. He is naturally a creature of his time. And 
 it is most convenient to begin with a consideration of 
 those aspects in which he is in agreement with the 
 greatest of his immediate predecessors. The main point 
 is this, that Jame s builds his n o vels prim arily upon a 
 motive, or an idea._,„In this respect he is particularly akin 
 toTMereflitE and George Eliot. 
 
 The difference between the earlier and the later Vic- 
 torian novels is in no respect more marked than in this 
 matter. The earlier English novelists had generally of 
 course a subject, — an historical subject, for example, like 
 Charles Reade in "The Cloister and the Hearth," or a 
 social subject like Thackeray in his studies of high life 
 and its Bohemian fringes. In these novels we find a 
 certain unity of composition resulting from the author's 
 interest in the historical setting or in social groups illus- 
 trating the manners of a given time. We also call to 
 mind how several of the earlier Victorian novelists made 
 fiction a vehicle for comment upon politics, the industrial 
 order and social abuses. Still more striking, in Dickens, 
 is the demonstration of a proposition in human nature by 
 the story of "Hard Times," — a satire upon a false ideal 
 of education, and in that respect suggestive of "Richard 
 Feverel." 
 
 But several things are to be observed. In most cases 
 in Dickens, the exposure of social abuses is an accidental 
 
12 The Method of Henry James 
 
 and inorganic element in the novel. Where the social 
 motive is more constant, it is generally made so at the 
 expense of the story. "Hard Times" is indeed a logical, 
 well-planned bit of fictional architecture. But it is prob- 
 ably the least entertaining performance of Dickens. The 
 characters are hardly more than algebraic symbols neces- 
 sary to the mathematical demonstration. It requires but 
 the most cursory comparison with the great canvases of 
 "Middlemarch" and "The Egoist" to see that it makes 
 no real anticipation of the work of the later Victorians. 
 As for the political novels of Beaconsfield, they are so 
 loose-jointed and sketchy that we call them novels only 
 on condition of calling them bad novels. 
 
 Generally speaking, in the earlier fiction, the indispen- 
 sable of the novel is plot ; in the later, it is character. Of 
 "The Portrait of a Lady" Mr. James tells us : "Trying 
 to recover here, for recognition, the germ of my idea, I 
 see that it must have consisted not at all in any conceit of 
 a 'plot,' nefarious name, in any flash, upon the fancy, of a 
 set of relations, or in any one of those situations that, 
 by a, logic of their own, immediately fall, for the fabulist, 
 into movement, into a march or a rush, a patter of quick 
 steps ; but altogether in the sense of a single character, the 
 character and aspect of a particular engaging young 
 woman, to which all the usual elements of a 'subject,' 
 certainly of a setting, were to need to be superadded." In 
 this connection James quotes the apology of Turgenieff, 
 who had been charged with not having "story" enough. 
 For him, too, the idea started "almost always with a 
 vision of some person or persons . . . interesting him and 
 appealing to him just as they were and by what they 
 were," and it was only then that he "had to find for them 
 the right relations, those that would most bring them 
 
Idea 13 
 
 out."^ All the story needed was the amount required to 
 exhibit the relations of his characters. 
 
 In so far as we can distinguish plot and character, it is 
 of course character in which the idea is more likely to be 
 lodged. But what we have before us is much more than a 
 contrast between plot and character as the main subject 
 of the novel. Everyone is aware of the prime importance, 
 in most of Dickens, of the characters. This is very dif- 
 ferent from the importance, in Meredith and George 
 Eliot, of character. The chief aim of Dickens is to make 
 us see his figures; in Meredith and George Eliot, and in 
 Henry James, the aim is quite as much to make us 
 acquainted with the character of the dramatis persona. 
 This is what James has in mind when, in an early essay on 
 TurgenieflF, he discusses the pictorial vividness of his 
 characters as a thing by itself, and then goes on to point 
 out, what is a very different matter, the "representative 
 character" of his persons. He speaks of Turgenieff's 
 great admiration for Dickens, which he attributes to the 
 vividness of Dickens in the drawing of his characters. 
 But he wonders at his rating Dickens so very high, since, 
 he says, "if Dickens fail to live long, it will be because 
 his figures are all particular without being general; 
 because they are individuals without being types ; because 
 we do not feel their continuity with the rest of humanity 
 — see the matching of the pattern with the piece out of 
 which all the creations of the novelist and the dramatist 
 are cut."=' 
 
 With the big men of James's time, in France as well 
 as in England and Russia, it is not the pictorial vividness 
 of the dramatis persona that is remarkable so much as 
 
 ^ Vol. Ill, pp. vi-vii. Compare also "Partial Portraits," pp. 
 314-316. 
 
 2 "Partial Portraits," p. 318. 
 
14 The Method of Henry James 
 
 their representative character. These men are not so much 
 concerned with particular figures or groups of figures 
 as with general types of character, with certain more or 
 less abstract ideas involving character. It is sufficient, 
 for the French, to refer to Zola, to Bourget, not to men- 
 tion names of more recent notability. In English the 
 most striking examples of this tendency are offered by 
 Meredith in the whole series of his novels, from "Richard 
 Feverel" to "The Amazing Marriage." Underlying all 
 the creations of his imagination is Meredith's conception 
 of the natural way. of living ; and his stories are largely 
 devoted to the illustration of certain long-lived fashions 
 of violating nature. A similar treatment of character is 
 marked in some of the novelists of our later generations, 
 notably in Mr. Galsworthy; though, judging from the 
 remarks of Mr. James in his essay on "The New Novel,'" 
 he is not impressed with the prevalence of a shaping idea, 
 even of a subject, in most novels of the present day. 
 "X;The prevailing idea, or motive, of James is the radi cal 
 opposition of the American_aiid_tbfi-£ uropcan ways of 
 "tafang hie. tir'**Uaisy UUler" the European point of 
 ■view-TSTepresented by the young American who, in the 
 course of a long schooling at Geneva, has lost his under- 
 standing of American character, and who comes too late 
 to appreciate the candid innocence and loveliness of the 
 somewhat "fresh" American girl. In "S^ Wings of 
 the Dove," the new world, in the shape of a ghostly pres- 
 ence, proves the shaming and undoing of the old. In 
 "The Portrait of a Lady," the new seems to become the 
 living victim of the old. In "The Golden Bowl," the two 
 attitudes, at first so sharply opposed in husband and wife, 
 tend to become identical. Old world and new world come 
 
 3 In "Notes on Novelists." 
 
Idea 15 
 
 to understand one another. New world takes on some 
 of the cunning of the old ; old world, some of the spiritual 
 insight of the new. 
 
 WTiile an "idea" must be general, the first suggestion 
 for a story may be general or particular. Often for, 
 James it was, as he tells us, some actual situation, a 
 morsel of real life picked up perhaps in conversation. 
 The first hint for "The Spoils of Poynton" was something 
 dropped by the author's partner at dinner about a lawsuit 
 between son and mother over the ownership of certain 
 valuable furniture. It was this "mere floating particle 
 in the stream of talk" which, as he said, "communicated 
 the virus of suggestion" for the large developmentSi that 
 followed.* The germ of "The Ambassadors," still to be 
 found embedded in the substance of that story, consisted 
 in the remarks made by a person of distinction one Sun- 
 day afternoon at a social gathering in a Paris garden. 
 They were essentially the remarks made by Lambert 
 Strether to "Little Bilham" in the second chapter of the 
 fifth book, in which Strether acknowledges that he has 
 made the mistake of not living, and advises his young 
 friend to "live all he can."" The tale of "The Real 
 Thing," similarly, had its germ in the actual experience 
 of "my much-loved friend George Du Maurier." A man 
 and woman of real gentility had applied to Du Maurier 
 for engagement as artist's models, for the "social" illus- 
 trations he was doing in "Punch." He was already well 
 served, it seems, by another couple who were far from 
 being persons of gentility but who played the part to the 
 entire satisfaction of the artist.* 
 
 *Vol. X, pp. v-vii. 
 5 Vol. XXI, p. V. 
 « VoL XVIII, p. XX. 
 
i6 The Method of Henry James 
 
 But however particular the circumstance that ,, attracts 
 the writer's noticej it begins at once to be work^ upon 
 by his prepared imagination, to be assimilated' to the 
 general substance of his mental world. The subject of 
 "The Real Thing" ceases to be a particular case and 
 comes to be a sort of problem in human reactions. Which 
 are likely to prove the more satisfactory models for an 
 artist wishing to make convincing illustrations of genteel 
 life, — actual gentlefolk who have no talent for posing, no 
 plasticity, or sitters without social pretension who have 
 yet imagination and the faculty of putting on whatever 
 semblance may be desired? If it be the latter that win 
 out in such a competition, behold an irony fit for the 
 hand of a writer of tales. Nothing is said by Mr. James 
 as to the outcome of the suggested competition in the 
 case of Du Maurier's applicants, or whether such a com- 
 petition was actually set on foot by their engagement. 
 The circumstances very early left the realm of the actual 
 and the particular and entered that of the general and 
 the representative. 
 
 The case of "The Ambassadors" again illustrates how 
 the particular circumstance is liable to fall into some 
 category all ready for it. The author is always waiting 
 to pounce upon whatever is "to his purpose." He has 
 been musing more or less consciously all his life on such 
 a situation or relationship. The idea has been in solution, 
 as it were, and this thing heard precipitates it. In the 
 present instance, that of the remarks that suggested to 
 him the theme of "The Ambassadors," "the observation 
 there listened to and gathered up had contained part of 
 the 'note' I was to recognize on the spot as to my pur- 
 pose . . . the rest was in the place and the time and the 
 scene they sketched: these constituents clustered and 
 combined to give me further support, to give me what I 
 
Idea 17 
 
 may call the note absolute."'' This is a characteristic and 
 remarkable statement. The ultimate seed of "The Am- 
 bassadors" would seem to be something less concrete 
 even than a situation, a problem or a relationship. It is 
 best described as a "note." And a note is something 
 only to be recognized by its vibration in unison vrith a 
 similar note already sounding within one's self. 
 
 In the case of "The Portrait of a Lady," and in that 
 of "The Wings of the Dove," each of which is built up 
 around a single central character, we are not told of any 
 particular suggestion for the character in real life. Isabel 
 Archer and Milly Theale seem to be really embodiments 
 of certain long-considered types, — types each of a human 
 being of a certain sort, or of a human being in a certain 
 predicament. It goes without saying that the predicament 
 is a "psychological," or spiritual, predicament. For even 
 Isabel Archer, a creation of James in his earlier period, 
 finds her difficulty rather in the relation of her ideals 
 to those of her husband than in the objective facts of the 
 situation. Of "The Wings of the Dove" and its heroine 
 Mr. James says : "The idea, reduced to its essence, is that 
 of a young person conscious of a great capacity for life, 
 but early stricken and doomed, condemned to die under 
 short respite, while also enamoured of the world; aware 
 moreover of the condemnation and passionately desiring 
 to 'put in' before extinction as many of the finer vibra- 
 tions as possible, and so achieve, however briefly and 
 brokenly, the sense of having lived."* In each of these 
 
 '' Vol. XXI, p. vi. The italics are inine. 
 
 ' Vol. XIX, p. V. In the act of reading proof I call to mind 
 that, while my statement of the case is in exact accord with the 
 account of James in the preface to "The Dove," he does suggest, 
 in "Notes of a Son and Brother," the existence of a particular 
 model for Milly Theale ; for so I understand the allusion on the 
 
i8 The Method of Henry James 
 
 novels then, while the subject is a person, it is a person, 
 in origin, typically and abstractly conceived. This will 
 appear in more striking fashion when we come to consider 
 the process by which the author developed the germ-idea 
 in the circumstances of the plot. 
 
 Other stories of James are still more obviously abstract 
 in theme, starting as they do not with a central character 
 but with some mere problem in human nature. 
 
 This does not mean that the books of James are to be 
 regarded as problem-novels. This will be made clearer 
 in a later chapter. A problem-novel or a problem-play, 
 as I understand it, is a novel or a play which undertakes 
 to solve, or at least to state, some knotty problem of 
 conduct. It frequently sets forth the predicament of 
 someone at odds with social convention or the law, and 
 is supposed to recommend prudence by an exhibition of 
 its contrary, or to condemn the social order by a demon- 
 stration of its disastrous effects on human nature. Of 
 course such a problem is a kind of idea. But it is only 
 one kind ; and it is quite unnecessary for an idea to take 
 on the practical intensity of a problem in order to rank 
 as an idea. 
 
 The word problem, as used in reference to the themes 
 of James, means something to be figured out by the 
 author, like a problem in physics, — something related to 
 the "problem" of present-day fiction merely by virtue of 
 its abstractness. A remarkable example of a story origi- 
 nating in such a problem is the little tale entitled "The 
 
 last page of that book to the death of a dear friend. All of 
 which goes to show how difficult it is to distinguish the indi- 
 vidual and the general in any of his characters. His books of 
 reminiscence reveal how very early and how constantly he was 
 typifying and majdng representative all human phenomena that 
 came within his range of vision. 
 
Idea 19 
 
 Story in It." This was suggested to Mr. James by the 
 observation of a distinguished novelist on being asked 
 "why the adventures he imputed to his heroines were so 
 perversely and persistently but of a type impossible to 
 ladies respecting themselves." His reply had been to point 
 out that "ladies who respected themselves took particular 
 care never to have adventures," and to challenge in his 
 turn: "A picture of life founded on the mere reserves 
 and suppressions of life, what sort of a performance — 
 for beauty, for interest, for tone — could that hope to be ?" 
 This, if we may trust the indications in the story itself, 
 was the point of view of a Frenchman ; and the American 
 novelist has ready the hint of an answer doing credit 
 equally to his Puritan cleanliness and his Yankee inge- 
 nuity. "The thing is, all beautifully, a matter of interpre- 
 tation and of the particular conditions; without a view 
 of which latter some of the most prodigious adventures 
 . . . may vulgarly show for nothing. However that 
 may be, I hasten to add," says Mr. James, "the mere stir 
 of the air around the question reflected in the bridf but 
 earnest interchange I have just reported was to cause 
 a 'subject,' to my sense, immediately to bloom there." * 
 
 Equally abstract, so far as we can learn from the 
 author, was in origin the theme of "The Awkward Age." 
 And the abstractness of theme is emphasized by the 
 account given by Mr. James of the function assigned to 
 the ten books into which the novel is divided. He in- 
 tended the novel for publication serially in "Harper's 
 Weekly," and he explained his scheme to the editor in 
 advance by a sort of chart or ground-plan of the work. 
 He drew on a sheet of paper "the neat figure of a circle 
 consisting of a number of small rounds disposed at equal 
 
 9 Vol. XVIII, pp. xxii-xxiii. 
 
20 The Method of Henry James 
 
 distances about a central object. The central object was 
 my situation, my subject in itself, to which the thing, 
 would owe its title, and the small rounds represented so 
 many distinct lamps, as I liked to call them, the function 
 of each of which would be to light with all due intensity 
 one of its aspects. . . . Each of my 'lamps' would be 
 the light of a single 'social occasion' in the history and 
 intercourse of the characters concerned, and would bring 
 out to the full the latent color of the scene in question 
 and cause it to illustrate, to the last drop, its bearing on 
 my theme."" 
 
 Once given the germ of the story, its motive or mere- 
 idee, the circumstances of the plot are evolved with 
 consistent undeviating logic that has little to do with the 
 older novelists' love of an effect for its own sake. This 
 is well exemplified in "The Wings of the Dove," as Mr. 
 James informs us in detail of the process of its concep- 
 tion. He starts, as we have seen, with the idea of "a 
 young person conscious of a great capacity for life, but 
 early . . . condemned to die under short respite, while also 
 enamoured of the world." This tells us little of the 
 particular circumstances and identity of the young per- 
 son, though Mr. James seems always to have had his 
 young person particularized as to sex. But the idea 
 proceeds to take on concreteness by natural process. The 
 surrender of everything by this girl would be enhanced 
 
 " Vol. IX, pp. xvi and xvii. Has "Harper's Weekly" changed 
 so completely in character since 1898; or was the naivete of Mr. 
 James in hoping for success with its readers for such a' venture 
 only to be compared with his naivete in supposing this series 
 of dialogue to be in the manner of "Gyp" or of Lavedan? The 
 question has lost no pertinence since the submersion of "Harper's 
 Weekly" in a periodical of other kidney. 
 
Idea 21 
 
 in poignancy by "the sight of cill she has" ; hence the old 
 New York family and the great wealth. The wealth and 
 the lack of relatives living also place her in the required 
 situation of entire freedom of action, which in turn makes 
 still stronger the sense of her being a Tantalus. And to 
 the same considerations must be attributed her nation- 
 ality. "I had from far back mentally projected a certain 
 sort of young American as more the 'heir of all the ages' 
 than any other young person whatever . . . ; so that here 
 was a chance to confer on some such figure a supremely 
 touching value."^^ 
 
 So much for the central character herself. And now 
 for the plot, now for the other persons involved with her 
 in the web of circumstance. Such a person as this, says 
 the author, falls necessarily "into some abysmal trap." 
 "She would constitute for others (given her passionate 
 yearning to live while she might) a complication as great 
 as any they might constitute for herself. . . . Our young 
 friend's existence would create . . . round her very 
 much that whirlpool movement of the waters produced 
 by the sinking of a big vessel or the failure of a great 
 business." ^^ So the author outlines for us the course 
 of the logic by which the story is evolved from the idea. 
 If it is a logic peculiar to his own imagination and experi- 
 ence of life, that is merely saying that it is the logic of 
 all art, which is so much more subjective an affair than 
 that of mathematics. The great point is that it is logic, 
 of whatever order, and not the unlicensed play of fancy, 
 still less a process admitting the deliberate search for 
 entertainment without regard to fitness and consistency. 
 
 Referring to the invention of the plot of "The Ambas- 
 sadors," Mr. James uses the very word logic. Having 
 
 11 Vol. XIX, p. ix. The italics are mine. 
 
 12 Id., pp. ix and x. 
 
22 The Method of Henry James 
 
 explained what was the original hint of an idea and 
 referred to Strether's outburst to little Bilham, he pro- 
 ceeds to set forth "that supplement of situation logically 
 involved in our gentleman's impulse to deliver himself 
 in the Paris garden on the Sunday afternoon — or if not 
 involved by strict logic then all ideally and enchantingly 
 implied in it. . . . It being thus the respectable hint that 
 I had with such avidity picked up, what would be the 
 story to which it would most inevitably form the center ?" 
 How account for Strether and his "peculiar tone"? "It 
 would take a felt predicament or a false position to give 
 him so ironic an accent. . . . Possessed of our ^friend's 
 nationality, to start with, there was a gieheral probability 
 in his narrower localism. . . . He would have issued, 
 our rueful worthy, from the very heart of New England 
 — at the heels of which matter of course a perfect train 
 of secrets tumbled for me into the light." Then further : 
 "What the 'position' would infallibly be, and why, on his 
 hands, it had turned 'false' — these inductive steps could 
 only be as rapid as they were distinct. I accounted for 
 everything ... by the view that he had come to Paris 
 in some state of mind which was literally undergoing, 
 as a result of new and unexpected assaults and infusions, 
 a change almost from hour to hour. . . . The false 
 position, for our belated man of the world . . . was 
 obviously to have presented himself at the gate of that 
 boundless menagerie primed with a moral scheme of 
 the most approved pattern which was yet framed to break 
 down on any approach to vivid facts." ^^ 
 
 Mr. James makes it clear that the logic of this evolu- 
 tion is not an arbitrary logic, subject to his capricious 
 manipulation. It may indeed follow the channels marked 
 
 13 Vol. XXI, pp. vjii-xiii. 
 
Idea 2$ 
 
 out for it in the peculiar topography of his imagination. 
 But it follows these channels without any vagabondage. 
 He describes the process indeed as if he had little to do 
 with it other than to record it. "The steps, for my fable, 
 placed themselves with a prompt and, as it were, func- 
 tional assurance — an air quite as of readiness to have 
 dispensed with logic had I been in fact too stupid for my 
 clue. . . . These things continued to fall together, as by 
 the neat action of their own weight and form, even while 
 their commentator scratched his head about them: he 
 easily sees now that they were always well in advance 
 of him."" 
 
 It is hardly necessary, I suppose, to dwell upon the 
 contrast between this method and that of the early Vic- 
 torian novelists. This confident, responsible inquiry 
 after the characters and incidents most fitted to illuminate 
 the carefully chosen subject of the picture is quite a 
 different thing from the search for incidents and charac- 
 ters interesting and picturesque in themselves and for 
 themselves. It is in this matter that one finds the closest 
 likeness of the novels of James to those of Meredith and 
 George Eliot. And indeed James has gone much farther 
 than these late Victorians in the sacrifice of the ideal of 
 variety to the ideal of consistenqr. 
 
 i*Vol. XXI, p. xiii. Compare the similar language used in 
 reference to the plot of "The Portrait of a Lady," Vol. Ill, p. xvii. 
 
II 
 
 PICTURE 
 
 James is distinguished from his immediate English 
 predecessors by his much greater preoccupation with 
 matters of form. This is an affair not merely of surface, 
 but strikes deeper and touches the idea, or theme, itself. 
 Here shows the fundamental difference between the work 
 of James and that of Meredith and George EHot. All 
 three novelists are given to the development of an idea or 
 motive ; the difference lies in the way in which the motive 
 is conceived. The others conceive their motive more as 
 thesis or moral; James conceives his as the subject of a 
 picture. 
 
 The word picture thus used in reference to the themes 
 of James^ makes a figure of speech, an analogy, quite in 
 the spirit of his own elucidations. It is intended to keep 
 before our minds the inveterately esthetic bias of this 
 author and to emphasize what is only a relative, but what 
 is nevertheless a broad, appreciable diflference between 
 his attitude and that of the others mentioned. James's 
 attitud§ is essentially artistic, theirs essentially philosopb" 
 ical, Of course in any novel, if there is an idea, it must 
 get itself embodied in a plot involving characters, and the 
 whole pattern of circumstance, with the characters 
 grouped according to their relations and their qualities, 
 
 ''■ Mr. Wells has some interesting animadversions on what 
 seems to him (or his mouthpiece) the perversity of James in 
 confounding the novel and the picture. They will be found in 
 the fourth chapter of "Boon, the Mind of the Race," together 
 with an amusing parody of the James method. 
 
Picture 25 
 
 may be thought of as constituting the subject of a picture 
 and a happy occasion for the exercise of the painter's 
 skill. Only it is not generally so thought of by author or 
 reader, especially in novels conscious of an "idea." And 
 in the case of Meredith and George Eliot, if we may 
 suppose these terms to be had in mind at all, they are 
 put the other way round. The characters and incidents 
 are intended to throw light upon the idea, to illustrate 
 or prove it. The subject exists for the benefit of the idea, 
 not the idea for the benefit of the subject. '^ 
 
 The contrast is most striking in the case of Meredith, 
 whose characters never get over that habit of represent- 
 ing abstractions which they contracted presumably from 
 the example of Meredith's father-in-law, the author of 
 "Nightmare Abbey," and in which they were confirmed 
 by his own theory of the comic. His first work of fiction 
 was a philosophical allegory expressed in fantastic narra- 
 tive in the manner of the "Arabian Nights." In his last 
 novel, the very names of the persons indicate their typical 
 character in relation to the great debate between Nature 
 and sentimental Romance. Woodseer is the clairvoyant 
 prophet of Nature, Fleetwood the sentimentalist seeking 
 an escape from the natural. And for practically every 
 novel of Meredith it would be possible to draw up a table 
 of persons suggestive of the table of "humours" prefixed 
 by Ben Jonson to several of his plays. Nearly every 
 character represents something in the philosophical 
 scheme of the story. And many of them are little more 
 than philosophical lay-figures. One has but to name such 
 novels as "Sandra Belloni" and "One of our Conquerors" 
 to call to mind whole groups of characters that are prac- 
 tically failures so far as pictorial effect is concerned. 
 They were conceived and executed with originality and 
 gusto ; but they remain bizarre and puzzling in themselves 
 
26 The Method of Henry James 
 
 and ill-composed in relation to one another. This is 
 largely owing, I feel, to the author's almost total neglect 
 of purely artistic considerations of the larger scope. The 
 characters and incidents being logically evolved, Mere- 
 dith's solicitude is practically confined to the logic of this 
 evolution. If the evolution is perfectly accomplished, if 
 each character says what he has to say to the thesis, if 
 each incident is made to flash its facet of the idea, then 
 all is well. The appeal being primarily to the mind, all 
 conditions are fulfilled if once the mind is satisfied. 
 
 James, too, starts often with an abstraction. But it is 
 not a thesis or a moral idea. It is a dramatic situation, 
 a human relationship, perhaps a social irony, — in short, a 
 composition. It is an arrangement of objects (that is, of 
 the persons and incidents involved) — ^by likeness and 
 opposition, by balance and cross-reference, with all regard 
 to emphasis and proportion, — corresponding to the 
 arrangement of figures, of background and foreground, 
 of masses and lines, in a painting. Like the subject of 
 a painting, it is chosen out of all other possible subjects 
 as the one most amenable to the art of representation. 
 Intellectual processes are plentifully there to guide the 
 evolution of subject into story. But the appeal is made 
 to the taste or imagination, and the intelligence, or JJo gical 
 se nse, oi"author and reader is pi^rply an I'ngtrntnpnt of 
 the esthetic mtention . 
 
 The diAerence is pronounced in the treatment of moral 
 values. These earlier novelists are concerned primarily 
 with the moral values as such. They wish their fable 
 to make plain the nature of right and wrong, or at least 
 of wise and foolish, and they wish to set the one in such 
 a light as to recommend it for imitation. They are not, 
 of course, crudely moralistic, being as they are enlight- 
 ened artists. But their works of fiction are constantly 
 
Picture 27 
 
 devoted, like their other writing, to the exposition of a 
 philosophy of life. Consider, for example, the care with 
 which George Eliot made choice of her characters in 
 "Middlemarch" so as to represent all the degrees of folly 
 and wisdom. With what deliberation this positivist 
 philosopher has noted the moral values and deficiencies 
 of her Caleb Garth, her Fred Vincy, her Doctor Lydgate, 
 not to mention the discriminated characters of "Adam 
 Bede"and "Felix Holt"! 
 
 Our American novelist showed himself very early con- 
 scious of the issues involved. In an essay on George 
 Eliot written in 1866, when he had not yet himself made 
 public any story of novel length, speaking of her as a 
 philosopher, and in that respect superior to Dickens and 
 Thackeray, he felt it necessary to indicate his reservations 
 on the side of the esthetic. "Considerable as are our 
 author's qualities as an artist," writes the young critic, 
 "and largely as they are displayed in 'Romola,' the book 
 strikes me less as a work of art than as a work of 
 morals."^ Twenty years later, in his dialogue on "Daniel 
 Deronda," he complains of the artificiality and unreality 
 of all in that book that has to do with Daniel himself. 
 Now the part that has to do with Daniel was precisely, 
 as we know, a development of the sort of motive which 
 appealed to George Eliot, which was a moral rather than 
 an artistic motive. Readers generally agree with Mr. 
 James that the character of Daniel Deronda is an artistic 
 failure ; and yet so deep is the appeal to our moral nature 
 that few readers can have lost interest before the com- 
 pletion of the history. 1 
 
 James deals equally wJth moral values (as will be 
 shown at length in our chapter on "Ethics"), but he is 
 not concerned with them in their practical aspect. Hej 
 
 * "Views and Reviews," p. 33. 
 
38 The Method of Henry James 
 
 is not setting out to recommend the right and give warn- 
 ing against the wrong. He is not even trying to make 
 clear their nature as right and wrong : his aim is neither 
 scientific nor ethical. His concern is with the appearance 
 made by right and wrong, if we can even indicate his 
 scale of values in terms so downright as these. They 
 are colors upon his palette, lines and masses available for 
 the comparatively transcendental uses of composition. 
 Hence the artist's delight in "ironies," which are patterns 
 of circumstance so revolting to the practical, the moral 
 sense, while often so pleasing in their appeal to the imag- 
 ination.^ 
 
 Only the artist could speak as James does of the sub- 
 ject of "What Maisie Knew." His imagination had been 
 caught first, he tells us, by "the accidental mention . . . 
 made to him of the manner in which the situation of 
 some luckless child of a divorced couple was affected 
 ... by the remarriage of one of its parents." Here 
 were great possibilities for art. "Sketchily clustered 
 even, these elements gave out that vague pictorial glow 
 which forms the first appeal of a living 'subject' to the 
 painter's consciousness." But this subject could be 
 greatly enhanced in value by the addition of certain 
 elements to the plot. The chief of these was the remar- 
 riage of both parents instead of merely one, and then 
 
 ^ It will now be clear how far the novels of James are from 
 being problem-novels. One would hesitate to apply the term even 
 to the novels of Meredith; and James, we see, has Meredith, 
 not to speak of George Eliot, between him and the odious genre. 
 It would be easy to state the theme of "The Awkward Age," or 
 that of "The Ambassadors" in such a way as to bring into relief 
 a latent problem,— the problem, say, for "The Awkward Age," 
 of the debutante and — to use the term in vogue — "sex-h3^iene." 
 But this is precisely what Mr. James, in all his discussions of 
 these books, takes particular pains to avoid. 
 
Picture 2p 
 
 the formation of a new tie between the step-parents. 
 The beauty of the situation would be to have the innocent 
 young child made partly responsible for the formation 
 of the new guilty relation. Mr. James dwells with 
 reminiscent joy upon the gradual emergence of this idea, 
 so full of "charm," of "virtue" to the "intellectual nos- 
 tril." The upshot of all his pleasant exploration was the 
 discovery of what he calls "the full ironic truth" of the 
 situation. "At last ... I was in presence of the red 
 dramatic spark that glowed at the core of my vision and 
 that, as I gently blew upon it, burned higher and clearer. 
 This precious particle was the full ironic truth— the most 
 interesting item to be read into the child's situation . . . 
 The child seen as creating by the fact of its forlornness 
 a relation between its step-parents, the more intimate 
 the better, dramatically speaking; the child, by the mere 
 appeal of neglectedness and the mere consciousness of 
 relief, weaving about, with the best faith in the world, 
 the close web of sophistication; the child becoming the 
 center and pretext for a fresh system of misbehaviour, 
 a system moreover of a nature to spread and ramify: 
 there would be the 'full' irony, there the promising theme 
 into which the hint I had originally picked up would 
 logically flower. No themes are so human as those that 
 reflect for us, out of the confusion of life, the close 
 connection of bliss and bale, of the things that help with 
 the things that hurt, so dangling forever before us that 
 bright hard medal, of so strange an alloy, one fact of 
 which is somebody's right and ease and the other some- 
 body's pain and wrong."* It is interesting to reflect how 
 similar is the position of Milly Theale and that of Maggie 
 Verver to that of Maisie, and how completely all that 
 is said here of the theme of the earlier story applies to 
 * Vol. XI, pp. v-viii. 
 
The Method of Henry James 
 
 those of "The Wings of the Dove" and "The Golden 
 Bowl." 
 
 In_aU^is_discussions Mr. James never speaks in any 
 tone other thanjtEar"Ot~aii- artist appraising the' points 
 of a "subject" ; and I recall no place in which he speaks 
 at all pXjhe moral tendency of his work save to glance 
 with impatience at "the dull dispute over the 'immoral' 
 subject and the rhbral."" The question about any subject 
 that disposes of all others is simply, he tells us, "Is it 
 valid, in a word, is it genuine, is it sincere, the result 
 of some direct impression or perception of life?" The 
 determining factor for a work of art is the artist himself 
 an d his way of en visag ing 'tfie facts. And the chief 
 difference between one sincere work of art and another 
 would appear to be merely a greater poverty or richness 
 of medium, the medium being, in Mr. James's figure, the 
 "enveloping air of the artist's humanity." When Mr. 
 James speaks of the subject of a novel as of "an ideal 
 beauty of goodness," he means, as he at once explains — 
 he is speaking of "The Ambassadors" — that it is a subject 
 "the invoked action of which is to raise the artistic faith 
 to its maximum."* It is an ideal theme not because 
 
 tif the value of its teaching, not because of the wisdom 
 hat one rubs off from it, but because of the intensity 
 if its appeal to "the artistic faith." 
 
 It thus appears that Henry James was strongly imbued 
 with the principle of "art ^ f or_ art's sake." And if he 
 shows a divergence in this respect from the feeling of 
 the great Victorian novelists, that is but the natural result 
 of his position in time. It is not without significance 
 that three of his tales — all dealing with literature and its 
 makers — appeared in the early numbers of "The Yellow 
 
 6 Vol. Ill, p. ix. 
 «Vol. XXI, p. vii. 
 
Picture 31 
 
 Book,"'' and that the first of his longer works in which 
 he entirely found himself were likewise the product of 
 the esthetic "nineties." Nor should we overlook, in this 
 connection, the French influence. The reader of Mr. 
 James's volumes of reminiscence will recall the important 
 part played in the domestic economy of Henry James, 
 Senior, by the "Revue des Deux Mondes." The novels of 
 George -Sand seem next only to those of Charles Dickens 
 in the greediness with which they were anticipated and 
 devoured by all members of the family. One recalls the 
 later intimacy of Henry James, Junior, in the community 
 of great French novelists of which the perhaps greater 
 Russian Turgeniefif was a naturalized citizen. Perhaps 
 not less important as a shaping influence was the early 
 haunting of Parisian picture-galleries by William and 
 Henry James, with the short period of study at Newport 
 under direction of William Hunt. Long before his first 
 brief essay in fiction had found its benevolent editor, the 
 young writer was thoroughly soaked in the terms and con- 
 ceptions of pictorial art. And his later career was not such 
 as to let him drop for a moment any of those dear solici- 
 tudes of painter and sculptor that are at once the bane and 
 solace of the artist's life. In his interpretative prefaces, 
 terms from the fine arts are next in frequency to those of 
 dramatic reference, if indeed they do not actually exceed 
 them in number. 
 
 The great word for Mr. James is composition. In 
 the early essay from which I have already quoted, he 
 writes of George Eliot as not remarkably strong in com- 
 position, and is much occupied in considering the relative 
 
 'These were "The Death of the Lion" (1894), "The Coxon 
 Fund" (1894) and 'The Next Time" (189S). Mr. James has 
 some reminiscent remarks on his connection with this periodical 
 in the preface to Vol. XV. 
 
22 The Method of Henry James 
 
 merits of her different works in the matter of "dramatic 
 continuity" in distinction from a "descriptive, discursive 
 method of narration." * Many years later, at the end of 
 his road, he is chiefly taken up, in his prefaces, with the 
 subtleties, often the "super-subtleties" (as he calls them 
 himself), of composition, because this alone is "positive 
 beauty."* The first obvious requirement of composition 
 is unity, or pictorial fusion, of the diverse elements in a 
 story. This is considered at length by Mr. James in 
 connection with his problem in designing "The Tragic 
 Muse." The idea of this book, as he first conceived it, 
 involved two distinct subjects, what he calls his "political 
 case" (the story of Nick Dormer) and what he calls 
 his "theatrical case" (that of Miriam Rooth). How put 
 these subjects together so as not to "show the seam"? 
 His own problem leads him to reflections on the want 
 of "pictorial composition" in so many novels of great 
 popularity and of classic distinction, "There may in its 
 absence be life, incontestably, as 'The Newcomes' has 
 life, as 'Les Trois Mousquetaires,' as Tolstoi's 'Peace 
 and War' have it; but what do such large loose baggy 
 monsters, with their queer elements of the accidental 
 and the arbitrary, artistically mean? . . . There is life 
 and life, and as waste is only life sacrificed and thereby 
 prevented from 'counting,' I delight in a deep-breathing 
 economy and an organic form. My business was accord- 
 ingly to 'go in' for complete pictorial fusion, some such 
 common interest between my first two notions as would, 
 in spite of their birth under quite different stars, do them 
 no violence at all." And he tells us how he managed that 
 difficult business. "From the moment I made out . . . 
 my lucky title, that is from the moment Miriam Rooth 
 
 * "Views and Reviews," p. 29. 
 'Vol. XXI, p. xvii. 
 
Picture 55 
 
 herself had given it me, so this young woman had 
 given me with it her own position in the book, and so 
 that in turn had given mc my precious unity, to which 
 no more than Miriam was either Nick Dormer nor Peter 
 Sherringham to be sacrificed." " 
 
 Another pictorial consideration calls for the device 
 described by the author as "foreshortening." This he 
 must on occasion resort to for maintaining the desired 
 balance between the first and second halves of a novel. 
 He frequently fails, through excess of foresight, to get 
 the "centre of his structure" actually placed in the middle 
 of the book. "The first half of a fiction insists ever on' 
 figuring to me as the stage or theatre for the second half, 
 and I have in general given so much space to making the 
 theatre propitious that my halves have too often proved 
 strangely unequal. Thereby has arisen with grim regu- 
 larity the question of artfully, of consummately masking 
 the favdt and conferring on the false quantiiy the brave 
 appearance of the true." His very mistakes are occasion 
 for pleasurable exercise, for it is clear he takes great 
 delight in meeting this grim question. "Therein lies the 
 secret of the appeal, to [the artist's] mind, of the success- 
 fully foreshortened thing, where representation is arrived 
 at . . . not by the addition of items . . . but by the art of 
 figuring synthetically, a compactness into which the imag- 
 ination may cut thick, as into the rich density of wedding- 
 cake."^^ While the above remarks were made in special 
 reference to "The Tragic Muse," the author often 
 encountered the same fascinating problem, notably in 
 writing "The Wings of the Dove." The latter half of 
 that book he calls "the false and deformed half" because 
 
 "Vol. VII, p. xiii. 
 *^ Id., pp. xii-xiii. 
 
34 The Method of Henry James 
 
 of the recurrence of his "regular failure to keep the ap- 
 pointed halves of his whole equal." "This whole comer 
 of my picture bristles with 'dodges' . . . for disguising 
 the reduced scale of the exhibition, for foreshortening 
 at any cost, for imparting to patches the value of pres- 
 ences . . . [showing] what a tangled web we weave 
 when — well, when, through our mislaying or otherwise 
 trifling with our blest pair of compasses, we have to 
 produce the illusion of mass without the illusion of 
 extent."" 
 
 Even the exigencies of serial publication give occasion 
 for the exercise of the artistic faculty. Mr. James men- 
 tions, in connection with "The Ambassadors," the inge- 
 nuity called for in planning the "recurrent breaks and 
 resumptions" of the story in such manner as to maintain 
 consistency of effect in spite of them. Here again he 
 mentions the difficulty not to complain of it but rather to 
 rejoice in it as an opportunity for the exhibition of one's 
 finest skill. By the time of the publication of "The 
 Ambassadors," in 1903, he had long been accustomed 
 actively to adopt this serial interruption "so as to make 
 of it, in its way, a small compositional law."^* It is 
 evident that each of the twelve books of "The Ambassa- 
 dors," or each larger section of the other novels, is to 
 be regarded in the light of a separate panel of a screen 
 or division of a wall-surface, and that the architectural 
 conditions limiting the size and form of each are made 
 to contribute their part to the effect of each division and 
 of the whole. Did ever the passion for order and beauty 
 more signally triurnph over ugly disorder in the nature 
 of things? 
 
 ** 12 Vol. XIX, pp. xviii-xix. 
 " Vol. XXI, pp. xiv-xv. 
 
Picture 35 
 
 The pictorial conception of his themes is well exempli- 
 fied in the series of stories presenting the American! 
 abroad. The formula is most frequently something like 
 this: a simple, candid, but very fine and lustrous soulj 
 seen against a dense murky background of sophisticated 
 manners and ways of thought. Most often it is an 
 American woman that is thus set in relief against the 
 European background. Such is the subject of "Daisy 
 Miller" and "The Portrait of a Lady" in the eariier 
 period, and, in the later period, of "The Wings of the 
 Dove" and "The Gk)lden Bowl." Mr. James makes no 
 secret of his fondness for the "sinister" and the "por- 
 tentous" as colors in his picture ; these colors, combined 
 with the mystery which is a still more constant source of 
 interest, contribute to the rich complexity of which he is 
 so fond. And they serve moreover to heighten the con- 
 trast involved in the subject, to create an effect of 
 chiaroscuro. Most effective pictorially are the figures 
 of Isabel Archer in "The Portrait" and Milly Theale in 
 "The Dove." But the secret of this effectiveness lies 
 more in the background than in the main foreground 
 subject. As much art went to the creation of Madame 
 Merle and Gilbert Osmond as to that of Isabel. It 
 required a greater mastery of the brush to give us Kate 
 Croy than Milly Theale herself. If, by the way, the 
 relation of Isabel and Osmond suggests that of Gwen- 
 dolen Harleth and Grandcourt in "Daniel Deronda," it 
 will be only to remind us how much more convincing* 
 and more effective James made this background of the 
 cold and the dark. And the superiority of James in this 
 painter's job arises largely from his stronger conscious- 
 ness of its being a question of painting. 
 
 I have pressed the comparison with George Eliot and 
 Meredith because they are the two novelists most like 
 
jd The Method of Henry James 
 
 James in procedure so far as the idea is concerned.^* 
 Many of the earlier English novelists, whom we have 
 seen to be very little versed in the "idea," are often very 
 great artists in the matter of picture. But it is not in the 
 same sense as that in which James is such a master of 
 picture. The droll and the grotesque figures of Dickens 
 are of course drawn with an intensity to which no other 
 maker of fiction can hope to approach. Hardly less 
 remarkable is Dickens's faculty of making us see the 
 London streets and buildings that form the setting of 
 his dramas. In some of his later stories, moreover, he 
 shows great ability in weaving plots of complex and 
 studious pattern. But- for composition proper he has no 
 regard, if indeed he has any inkling of what it means; 
 and it would be an over-great stretching of our figure 
 to apply the term picture to the general theme or subject 
 of any of his stories. Thackeray had more of the 
 artist's sense for scale of values. But he was far from 
 conceiving, let alone desiring, for his novels, that pre- 
 served consistency of tone, that constant reference to 
 the center of all parts of the canvas, in which James took 
 so much satisfaction in his own work.^" We need not 
 point out the complete want of coherent scheme in such an 
 inferior work as "The Virginians." We may find our illus- 
 
 1* I do not mean to consider the question of personal indebted- 
 ness of James to either of these writers. Most profound is his 
 silence on the subject of Meredith, whom he mentions, so far as 
 I have noticed, only as a contributor in early days to "Once a 
 Week." He has much more to say, first and last, about George 
 Eliot, and he was doubtless somewhat influenced by her work. 
 But all that we need assume in reference to these three writers 
 so near in time is that likeness of method natural to artists 
 subject to similar influences. 
 
 IB Note what he says on the subject in connection with "The 
 Tragic Muse" in Vol. VII, pp. vii and xxii. 
 
Picture J7 
 
 trations in Thackeray's greatest work, and note the com- 
 parative neglect of all but the central portrait in "Vanity 
 Fair," or, if not neglect, the comparative failure then in 
 the handling of the sub-plot, along with the correlative 
 fact of attention squandered upon insignificant minor 
 characters for whom a sense of proportion prescribes the 
 scantiest treatment. We are here taking note merely, 
 it may be, of an earlier fashion in the design of the novel. 
 For it needs but the mention of George Moore, of John 
 Galsworthy, of Joseph Conrad, to give assurance that 
 the fashion represented by Henry James was to find a 
 most respectable following if not actually to supersede 
 that of Thackeray. And we have only to name Charles 
 Reade, Bulwer-Lytton, Disraeli, to remind ourselves how 
 much more striking is the contrast when we bring into 
 comparison the second-class novelists of the earlier time. 
 It is a chief distinction of James that he was the first to 
 write novels in English with a full and fine sense of the 
 principles of composition. 
 
Ill 
 
 REVELATION 
 
 In naming points in which James has passed beyond 
 this and that great novelist, we need not use the word 
 surpassed. We must be careful not to write as if the 
 world of readers, or even the world of critics, were 
 agreed upon the merits of his work. Mr. James must 
 have learned long since to content himself with the some- 
 what frigid respect of the great world of reviewers, and 
 to look, for a warmer and less guarded affection, to a 
 small band of devotees. And this is largely because of 
 the extremes to which he has carried his conception of 
 the novel in terms of picture. 
 
 This pictorial preoccupation goes so far as almost to 
 bring about a reversal of the essential method of fiction. 
 The essential method of fiction is, or has always been, 
 narrative. The earliest English novels consisted of a 
 series of adventures, whose thread might generally be 
 cut off anywhere with little damage to any plot there 
 was. This is true for Smollett almost as much as for 
 Defoe. Even in the case of Richardson, whose novels 
 have a real story, with beginning, middle and end, and 
 with narrative close-wrought and cumulative in effect, 
 we have yet to make exceptions, and to acknowledge that 
 the actual story of "Pamela" is contained in the first 
 volume, while the second and third volumes are like-' 
 instructive appendices. The early conception of the novel 
 when conscious of form was in terms of the epic narra- 
 tive, as appears in the theory of Fielding and in the 
 practice notably of Fielding and Scott. And this con- 
 
Revelation 3p 
 
 tinues to be the conception of the English novel down to 
 the time of Henry James. With novelists like Meredith 
 or George Eliot, to be sure, the logic remains incomplete 
 till the end of the book, which as a whole constitutes the 
 unfolding of all the implications of the subject. But still 
 with them the narrative is felt to be essentially an affair 
 of stages, of a series, of progression in time. Having 
 learned to know the characters of the persons introduced, 
 you are to see how these characters display themselves 
 in action, you follow them from step to step of their ful- 
 filment. Given the situation in which they find them- 
 selves, you are to follow the successive phases of the 
 situation as it alters under stress of the dramatic action. 
 But in the most distinctive work of James the sense 
 of progress, of story, is almost altogether lost. You have 
 rather a sense of being present at the gradual unveiling 
 of a picture, or the gradual uncovering of a wall-painting 
 which had been whitewashed over and is now b^ing 
 restored to view. The picture was all there from the 
 start ; there is nothing new being produced ; there is no 
 progress in that sense. The stages are merely those 
 by which the exhibitor or the restorer of the picture 
 uncovers now one, now another, portion of the wall or 
 canvas, until finally the whole appears in its intelligible 
 completeness. Or, once more to vary the figure, it is as 
 if a landscape were gradually coming into view by the 
 drawing off of veil after veil of mist. You become 
 aware first of certain mountain forms looming vaguely 
 defined. Little by little the mountains take on more 
 definite shape, and something can be made out of the 
 conformation of the valleys. And very slowly, at length, 
 comes out clear one detail after another, until in the 
 end you command the whole prospect, in all its related 
 forms and hues. 
 
4.0 The Method of Henry James 
 
 It is almost as if Heniy James had been aiifected by 
 some of the metaphysics in which his brother William 
 had so professional a concern. It is as if he had agreed, 
 with certain idealist philosophers, that time — as well as 
 space — is not a reality, but a condition of our conscious- 
 ness, a convenient instrument of thought; that things 
 do not really happen one after another, but that that is 
 only the way in which they get themselves represented in 
 the mind of the Absolute Being, in whom there is really 
 no variableness neither shadow of turning. Among his 
 many excursions in what are called "psychical" realms is 
 a curious little tale entitled "Maud-Evelyn." ^ It has to do 
 with an elderly couple who spend their days making up an 
 imaginary history of their lost daughter. Never was 
 story told at a greater remove from the persons most 
 nearly concerned. The one who tells it to "us" gathered 
 in the firelight is a certain Lady Emma. But she has 
 picked it up in a series of conversations, extending over 
 many years, with her proteges Marmadulce and the girl 
 who loved him ; and she gives it to us in successive install- 
 ments as she received it. In the beginning the age of 
 Maud-Evelyn when she died seems to have been left 
 somewhat indeterminate, so as to suit the story her 
 parents were to invent for her. When they made the 
 acquaintance of Marmaduke, she was represented by her 
 parents as old enough to have been engaged to marry the 
 charming young man at the time of her death. And that 
 is the first invention of their pious backward imaginings. 
 We next learn that preparations had in fact all been made 
 for her wedding, the bridal suite beautifully furnished 
 and the presents laid out in shining order. (They were 
 all really to be seen at the home of the parents ; for the 
 old couple and Marmaduke have spent their time getting 
 
 1 It appeared in "The Atlantic Monthly" in April, 1900. 
 
Revelation 41 
 
 together the properties to suit their little domestic 
 drama.) Eventually she is imagined to have been actually 
 married to our young man, so that her parents may feel 
 that she had fulfilled her beautiful destiny before death 
 took her. ^ 
 
 It is thus that we, in the present, "assist" at the gradual 
 unfolding of events long past. "We," that is, in the 
 present of the story ; for the story consists in the process 
 of the unfolding in the present, not in the events long 
 past. We might take this as an exaggerated type of the 
 method of James in his novels in which the successive 
 moments of the present narrative impress one as the 
 successive steps by which we are made acquainted with 
 the set of facts already constituted. If you are to use 
 the word story at all in connection wim these novels, the 
 story is not what the characters do, nor how the situation 
 works out. The story is rather the process by which the' 
 characters and the situation are revealed to us. The last 
 chapter is not an addendum, tacked on to let us know 
 what happened after the wedding. It simply turns on 
 the light by which the whole situation — which has perhaps 
 long since taken shape in the dark — is at last made clear. 
 And no one can hope to learn how such a novel "comes 
 out" by turning to the last chapter, which is wholly un-- 
 intelligible save as the last phase of the general situation, 
 — ^last not necessarily in time, but the last to be displayed, 
 and as meaningless by itself as a predicate without a 
 subject. 
 
 This is obviously very diflferent from the procedure 
 of the earlier English novelists. Even in George Eliot 
 you know by the time you have read a fraction of the 
 book who it is you are dealing with. You know Adam 
 Bede and Hetty Sorrel and Dinah Morris; you know 
 Felix Holt, and Gwendolen Harleth, and Dorothea 
 
42 The Method of Henry James 
 
 Brooke. And you know what they have to cope with. 
 You aren't quite sure how, given such characters and 
 such circumstances, the equation will work itself out. 
 That is the story. But the elements are all given. The 
 same is true for Meredith ; and so a fortiori for Thack- 
 eray and Dickens, for Scott and Fielding. 
 
 There are indeed many instances in James of this 
 usual practice. "The Bostonians" is a perfect example 
 of this method. And this is probably one of the chief 
 reasons for its being denied admission to Mr. James's 
 collection of stories. The book is in three partS.^ In 
 the first part, the situation is entirely set forth and the 
 problem stated. The cards are all upon the table. The 
 second and third parts show us a long-drawn-out playing 
 of the cards with which we have been made familiar. 
 There are some traces of this method in most of the 
 earlier novels of James, even those deemed worthy of 
 inclusion in the canon, such as "Roderick Hudson," "The 
 American" and "The Tragic Muse." "Roderick Hudson" 
 reminds one of "Romola" in its record of the progressive 
 disintegration of a man's character. 
 
 But in the novels last mentioned, and still more in "The 
 Portrait of a Lady" and "The Princess Casamassima," 
 there is a strong tendency towards the author's distinctive 
 method of gradual revelation. This finds its application 
 in connection with certain characters and groups of 
 characters, like Madame Merle and Gilbert Osmond in 
 "The Portrait," and Christina Light in "Roderick Hud- 
 son." In "The Princess Casamassima" we find the 
 nearest approach to the technique of the later period. 
 For here the story might be described as the gradual 
 unfolding or illumination of the character of this woman 
 so appealing to the curious imagination, and our hero and 
 
Revelation 43 
 
 the rest of the complement of characters, as essentially 
 the spectators of this woman's performance. 
 
 It is, however, more constantly in the twentieth-cen- 
 tury series that we have the full display of the method 
 towards which all along the author was feeling his way. 
 It is in these latest fictions that one feels most the want of 
 movement, of that action which makes the indispensable, 
 and the most striking element, of the ordinary novel. 
 The sense at least of such objective performance is 
 almost entirely lost; and incident, while it is implied in 
 the situations presented, hardly appears in any state 
 more naked than that of implication. The narrative is 
 taken up with the gradual emergence of relationships 
 and points of view, of attitudes and designs. Behind 
 these subjective facts lurk indeed great cloudy masses of 
 the objective. But they remain always in the mist, behind 
 the subjective facts, — ^which seldom, for that matter, 
 come out themselves into the clear, sharp light of plain 
 statement. 
 
 The most amazing instance of this type of story is 
 "The Sacred Fount," the first of the novels of James 
 to make its appearance in the present century. It consists 
 of a series of discussions at a week-end party concerning 
 the sentimental relationships of certain men and women 
 present. Not a single incident is brought into the narra- 
 tive more important than the intimate look of two persons 
 observed together in an arbor, a gentleman's appearance 
 of age, or the waxing and waning of a lady's wit. The 
 discussions are held largely between "me" and "Mrs. 
 Briss"; and the climax of the story is found simply in 
 the most extended of our debates, late at night in the 
 hospitable drawing-room. Each one of us has developed 
 an elaborate hypothesis to account for certain social 
 phenomena, — phenomena whose actuality may itself be 
 
44 The Method of Henry James 
 
 brought in question, being so much an affair of the inter- 
 pretation (if not the imaginative invention) of appear- 
 ances. "I" hold that the present wit and competence of 
 Percy Long — ^heretofore a dull and unskilful member of 
 society — ^have had to be paid for by the woman who loves 
 him ; and that this accounts for the nervous manner and 
 peculiar tactics of Mae Server, who has lost her former 
 cleverness and is trying to conceal the fact. On the same 
 grounds I explain to myself the blooming of Mrs. Bris- 
 senden — ^my opponent in this debate — at the expense of 
 "poor Briss," who daily presents an older face to the 
 world. "Poor Briss," like Mae Server, has had to tap 
 the "sacred fount," the limited source of vital energy, in 
 order to give abundance of life to the one he loves. 
 Following this clue, it appears to me that Percy Long and 
 "Mrs. Briss," conscious of the similarity of their position, 
 have formed a tacit league for concealment and the de- 
 fence of their common interest. And again "poor Briss" 
 and Mae Server seem to have been drawn together by a 
 sense of their community and a common need for sym- 
 pathy. It was Mrs. Briss in the first place who helped 
 me to my theory. But it is obvious that, when she comes 
 to realize how far I may carry its application, she must 
 deny these facts and make her own independent inter- 
 pretation of the facts she acknowledges. And Mrs. Briss 
 is a most ingenious and plausible debater. So that "I" am 
 obliged to hurry away from her neighborhood in order to 
 maintain my own view of the facts. And so, in. the end, 
 the reader is left provided with two complete sets of inter- 
 pretations of a group of more or less hypothetical rela- 
 tions. ' Nothing whatever, in the ordinary sense, has come 
 to pass. But two distinct pictures of the same subject 
 have been blocked out and painted in before our eyes. 
 And one thing further is to be observed. The nature 
 
Revelation 45 
 
 of the facts discussed by "me" and Mrs. Brissenden — 
 the personal bearing of them upon herself, not to speak 
 of her friends — ^makes it necessary that our discussion 
 should be conducted largely by indirection, in terms that 
 convey our meaning without ever putting it in plain 
 English. Indeed the situation, as it immediately affects 
 her, must be altogether ignored so far as overt mention 
 goes. The same thing is true for discussions between 
 "me" and Percy Long, "me" and Mae Server, "me" and 
 still other persons. So that some of the terms of our 
 logic are like lines projected into space. Some of our 
 weapons are perpetually hidden. And we are perpetually 
 struggling for ends, and from motives, unmentioned but 
 vividly present in the minds of both parties. It must be 
 clear how much all this contributes to the "nebulous" 
 character of the situations. It is this that estranges so 
 many readers who insist on the author's keeping them at 
 least informed, and at once, of the precise meaning of 
 each play in the game. The feelings of one such reader 
 have been amusingly expressed by Mr. W. C. France, 
 writing in "The Bookman."^ "Now," says Mr. France, 
 "though Mr. James talks a great deal in his novels about 
 'giving it' and 'having it straight' the thing you vul- 
 garly want to know is not given you straight. You must 
 guess it from that unemphasized fact of a later train, 
 that damning absence of an overcoat, . . . that otherwise 
 unaccountable burst of tears. When Mr. James finesses 
 the essential incidents, when you are left to gather the 
 presence of a card of greater value from the very fact 
 that he plays low, he estranges the masculine attention, 
 and intrigues the soul of the feminine reader." 
 
 If Mr. France has correctly distinguished the reactions 
 of the sexes to the stories of James, and has given the 
 
 2 March, 1905. 
 
4^ The Method of Henry James 
 
 right explanation of the difference, then no story should 
 more strongly repel the "masculine" nor more strongly 
 attract the "feminine" reader than "The Sacred Fount." 
 And no story can be more conspicuous for its difference 
 from the ordinary fictitious narrative. It is perhaps 
 unwise, however, to rest too great a burden of illustration 
 upon this rather inferior work, which Mr. James did not 
 think worthy of inclusion in the "canon." More author- 
 itative evidence may be gathered from those later novels 
 of which he so fully and frankly approves. And these 
 quite sufficiently illustrate my description of his method. 
 Of "The Ambassadors" we may say that there is no story 
 except that a man goes to Paris on an errand and returns 
 home without being able to carry it out. What you are 
 really occupied with, in this story, is the discovery of 
 Paris; or rather — and this is less objective still — ^the 
 discovery of what Paris means. When you have made 
 out what Paris means, you leave it there as it was. And 
 the picture is complete. More strictly speaking, you — 
 that is, Strether — have discovered the relation you bear 
 you]*self to that order of civilization; and this is the 
 pictorial arrangement which is the upshot of the long 
 process of laying on oils. 
 
 In "The Golden Bowl" there is a similar theme which 
 we may describe as the discovery by the Italian Prince- 
 creature of an ancient, sophisticated world — of the rela- 
 tion he bears to the fresh and fine ideals of the new 
 American world. Charlotte and Maggie are the two 
 touchstones by which his character and insight are tried 
 out. Charlotte represents — in spite of her technical 
 Americanism— the order of thought and of social accom- 
 plishment to which the Prince more naturally belongs 
 and which he would more naturally appreciate. Maggie 
 proves the finer, and in the end the more potent, influence ; 
 
Revelation 4/ 
 
 and it is by his appreciation of her, his preference of her 
 to Charlotte, that he proves his fundamental worth, his 
 kinship below the surface with the finer and stronger 
 character. It is thus he shows himself — like the gilded 
 crystal bowl — of the finest material, and, though cracked, 
 not broken beyond repair and the hope of permanent 
 serviceableness. But we are very little sensible of the 
 action^ of the movement by which this comes about. If 
 we are sensible of a process, it is the process by which 
 Maggie displays the strength of her nature. Or, taking 
 it the other way round, and so making clearer its subjec- 
 tive character, it is the process by which the Prince 
 becomes aware of the strength of his wife's nature. 
 In the earlier half of the book, which dgubtless includes 
 reference to a larger number of objective facts, and those 
 of greater bulk and extension, what we are chiefly called 
 upon to view is the gradual emergence of the situation, 
 or the pattern of social units, made up of Maggie and 
 her father, the Prince and Qiarlotte. If it is true that 
 the situation comes into being before our eyes, what we 
 are conscious of is rather how we become aware of the 
 situation already in being. 
 
 These stories are not without incident. Only, as we 
 have seen, the author has a trick of referring to the past 
 each new incident he introduces. We are invited to look 
 back through the consciousness of one of the characters 
 upon a fait accompli; or we learn of the fact through 
 some dialogue in which the characters discuss the bearing 
 of what has happened upon their present situation. 
 James makes no use at all of the "dramatic" possibilities 
 of the death bf Milly Theale in her Venetian palace or 
 of the last meeting of Milly and Merton. The facts are 
 of importance, but they are of importance merely as 
 forming the background and conditions of the final inter- 
 
48 The Method of Henry James 
 
 views between Merton and Kate Croy, — scenes in which 
 the theatrical is reduced to the minimum, and, while 
 actually making new decisions and taking steps which 
 determine the course of their lives, the characters give 
 the impression of merely working out the logic of what 
 has gone before. So in the first part of "The Golden 
 Bowl" we are very little concerned with the action 
 involved in the love-making of Charlotte and the Prince. 
 They talk as if they were not actors in a drama but 
 figures in a pattern. We do not see them doing this or 
 that ; we become aware of the fact that they have arrived 
 at such a position in relation to one another jmd the other 
 characters. 
 
 In "The Golden Bowl" and "The Ambassadors," Mr. 
 James has justified his peculiar method, at least to the 
 lover of James. In "The Golden Bowl" it proves not 
 incompatible — strangely enough, it might seem — with a 
 sense of dramatic struggle. In neither book does it have 
 the effect of reducing the characters to puppets. The 
 motives and issues are kept distinct, if indeed not at once 
 clear and fully understood ; the interest ever deepens and 
 broadens ; there is a steadiness and continuity of progress 
 that carries the reader forward in its strong sweep. In 
 the case of "The Wings of the Dove" there is much 
 more doubt of the author's success. The difficulties of 
 the system here come out strong. In certain parts of the 
 story, not only does nothing happen ; we are considerably 
 puzzled to know what it is we are looking for. That is, 
 we are not sufficiently admitted into the consciousness 
 of the character most concerned, or it is a consciousness 
 too troubled for us to follow with patience or comfort 
 its gradual enlightenment. The indications are there, as 
 will appear upon rereading, but they are often too spar- 
 ingly supplied to let us in to the very mystery we are 
 
Revelation 4P 
 
 supposed to gape at. Of course, if we like James at all, 
 it must be for the mystery. But we must know what the 
 mystery is about. We must know at least in what direc- 
 tion to look for light. 
 
 But if "The Wings of the Dove" betrays the difficulty 
 of this system of story-writing, it none the less convinc- 
 ingly displays the system. And especially it reminds us 
 again how impossible it is to take in any of these stories 
 without the light supplied by the conclusion. "The Wings 
 of the Dove" presents itself to me as primarily a study of 
 the character of Kate Croy. That is the most interesting 
 mystery of the book. And you certainly don't under- 
 stand whom you are dealing with here, in the case of 
 Kate and her lover, until the very last scene applies the 
 test by which all that goes before may be interpreted. 
 Similarly, in "The Golden Bowl," you do not understimd 
 until the last scene the appropriateness of this gilded 
 and broken crystal cup which has been chosen to sym- 
 bolize the princely husband of Maggie. And something 
 similar is true of all the novels of the later period. 
 
IV 
 
 SUSPENSE 
 
 Thus we are brought to one of the chief peculiarities 
 of the method of James : his way of doling out his infor- 
 mation in bits, — just enough each time to keep the reader 
 from deserting, never enough to satisfy or finally 
 enlighten him until the end. Something like this, in 
 combination with other refinements of technique equally 
 suggesting Henry James, is to be found in certain dis- 
 tinguished novelists of the present time who may be 
 regarded as disciples of his. It is enough to mention 
 Mrs. Wharton's "Ethan Frome" and Mr. Conrad's "Lord 
 Jim." But Mrs. Wharton and Mr. Conrad have each of 
 course a distinctive manner and a special line. Neither 
 of them is in the remotest danger of being accused of 
 slavish imitation of whomsoever; and they have left 
 Henry James in undisputed possession of his own field. 
 And the practice in question, in just this sort of novel, 
 and in such completeness of execution, remains so far 
 as I know unique. In this method the most subjective 
 of psychological novels are in agreement with the most 
 objective of detective stories. And they affect the reader 
 in much the same way, keeping his curiosity forever 
 aroused and never quite allayed until the end of the 
 jstory. In my own reading, there is no fiction of any sort 
 tin which suspense is so constantly sustained. You are 
 literally always in suspense, or at least always curious , 
 always clamoring for more light. 
 
 It is perhaps some stretch of the meaning of the word 
 suspense to apply it to these effects of James. In other 
 
Suspense 51 
 
 novels we are in suspense as to the fortunes of our 
 friends in the story, their success or failure in what they 
 have undertaken, the nature of the dangers or difficulties 
 they are destined to meet. The question is, What is going 
 to happen? In James, the question is more often. What 
 is it that did happen? where are we now? what did that 
 mean? what is the significance of that act? what new" 
 light is thrown upon such and such a character, or upon 
 our situation ? Milly Theale, finding herself in the misty 
 unfamiliar realm of English society, spends her days 
 and weeks in making out now this, now that form, at 
 first so indistinct in the fog, and so by degrees the general 
 lay of the land. In particular she is engaged in the dis- 
 covery, bit by bit, of the extensive personality of Kate 
 Croy and the relation she bears to Milly and to Merton 
 Densher. And then, through a large part of the book, 
 we follow the gradual process by which Merton recon- 
 structs, from her words and acts, the character and 
 "system" of Kate, and, in a wider circle, from all that has 
 befallen, the position in which he finds hiipself, — the 
 state of his own mind and heart. This may not be 
 suspense in the usual understanding of the term; but 
 there is a continual appeal to our curiosity, to our concern 
 for the characters. And there is more opportunity for 
 the author to play upon this concern, or this curiosity, 
 than in any other type of story, — ^more chance for him to 
 "play" us as the angler plays his trout. 
 
 This method is very much in use in all the later novels 
 and tales and in many of the earlier ones. But it finds 
 perhaps its completes! employment in "The Ambassa- 
 dors." Nowhere has the author taken greater pains in 
 turning on his light by slow degrees. In the first of 
 the twelve books, prescribed by the twelve installments 
 in a magazine, we do not even arrive at the Paris which 
 
52 The Method of Henry James 
 
 is to be, we may say, the special subject of the study, nor 
 do we make the acquaintance of any of the major 
 characters other than the ever present observer and am- 
 bassador himself. The contrast between Maria Gostrey 
 and Waymarsh, seen in the vestibule of England, the 
 "rows" of Chester, is all the hint we are offered of that 
 "Europe" which is the general category under which 
 "Paris" is included as the particular instance. It is not 
 till the end of the third book, and after careful prepara- 
 tion, that the young hero of the story is allowed to make 
 his entry, with all the readjustments which his appearance 
 requires in the views of Strether. In the next book, 
 owing to the very favorable impression made by Chad, 
 the attention of Strether is bent chiefly upon the woman 
 who may be thought to have had a hand in turning out 
 so fine a man. Strether now envisages the possibility 
 that this is a "virtuous attachment," and begins to specu- 
 late on whether it is the mother or the daughter who is 
 the object of an attachment as yet so little defined. 
 Neither mother nor daughter enters until the fifth book, 
 and it is not till the latter part of this book that Strether 
 learns from Maria the outlines of the history of Madame 
 de Vionnet. Chad's declaration that it is Madame de 
 Vionnet and not her daughter whose friendship keeps him 
 in Paris comes now to require the construction of some 
 new hypothesis or interpretation. In the two following 
 books we observe the process by which Strether so falls 
 under the influence of the French lady as to make himself 
 her champion, and becomes so absolute a convert to 
 "Paris" as to grow sceptical of Woollett. 
 
 Meanwhile we have received from time to time some 
 addition to our knowledge of the formidable Mrs. New- 
 some of Woollett, present only in the conscience of 
 Strether. Light upon the American point of view begins 
 
Suspense 5J 
 
 to grow with the arrival of the Pococks. We want to 
 know whether Sarah or Jim will see, as Strether has seen, 
 the "values" of Chad in his later phase. We watch for 
 the WooUett reaction. Before the formal announcement 
 of this reaction by Mrs. Pocock, two new facts are 
 "released" and call for assimilation. Mamie is to be 
 an exception to the blindness of WooUett; she is to be 
 on Strether's side. The other fact to be digested is the 
 engagement of Jeanne to some gentleman we have not 
 met. This announcement, made at this time like a move 
 in a game, gives Strether the sense of depths in the 
 situation not yet sounded by his imagination, and de- 
 mands more extended discussions with Maria. Now 
 follows Sarah Pocock's outburst of indignation against 
 Strether for his friendly relations with Madame de 
 Vionnet, which she declares to be "an outrage to women 
 like us" and especially an insult to Mrs. Newsome. "She 
 has confided to my judgment an^ my tenderness," says 
 her daughter, reproducing the great lady's very words, 
 "the expression of her personal sense of everything and 
 the assertion of her personal dignity." In this interview 
 we have the strongest light thus far vouchsafed on the 
 personality of Mrs. Newsome; but it takes the comment 
 of Maria Gostrey in the next book to bring out still 
 more her quality as Strether himself has been brought to 
 feel it. She has no imagination — ^that is the reason she 
 can make herself felt so effectively. She has even, says 
 Maria, imagined stupidly and meanly; or, what comes 
 to the same thing, intensely and ignorantly. 
 
 The final chapters of this eleventh book furnish the 
 last and — objectively — ^the most substantial fact necessary 
 for Strether to determine his attitude in the whole affair, 
 — ^the fact that this attachment of Chad and Madame de 
 Vionnet is not a "virtuous" attachment after all. But 
 
54 The Method of Henry James 
 
 it requires the five chapters of the twelfth book to bring 
 out completely the final attitude of Strether, — how, as 
 Maria perceives, the shock of knowledge has come with- 
 out bringing him any nearer to Mrs. Newsome or making 
 him any less ardent a champion of the French woman, 
 and how, for all that, he will not make his home in Paris, 
 not being — like Maria — "in harmony with what sur- 
 rounds him" there. '^If 
 
 Thus from beginning to end of the story, we are 
 occupied with ju st finding ou t what it is the author is 
 hiding from us. And our eagerness is made no less keen by 
 the fact that in the story there are always several charac- 
 ters besieging every possible source of information and 
 that it is througjijtheirjnouths our curiosity voices itself. 
 But the author is never to be shaken from his attitude 
 of serene imperturbability. He is never to be persuaded 
 to turn on more light than he thinks we absolutely need 
 at the moment. He is like some public personage con- 
 stantly beset by a swarm of reporters hungry for a bit of 
 news, who does "release," bit by bit, such news as he 
 sees fit. The public personage sees fit to let the public 
 have whatever information, real or imaginary, will re- 
 dound to the credit of his party or will tend to build 
 up a particular reputation for himself. The author sees 
 fit to let his reader have whatever item will, at the 
 moment, best serve in bringing out the "subject" with 
 which he is engaged, — only making sure not to let him 
 have more than he can well manage at one time. 
 
 This extreme jealousy of his material is not to be 
 attributed wholly, or even principally, to a mischievous 
 love of teasing the reader, — however legitimate a motive 
 this may be in a writer of fiction. More important is hisd 
 con cern that the reader may not have too big a help inj^.l 
 He wisheshim to master one position thoroughlyjbeforel 
 
Suspense 55 
 
 be proceed s to the nex t. This both on account of the 
 next position, which will be more securely seized if the 
 first position is solidly occupied, and more especially on 
 account of the earlier position itself. James wishes to 
 express the last drop of human significance from what- 
 ever circumstance he puts into his press. This is required 
 by that law of economy that he so cheerfully obeys. Any 
 less deliberate rate of progress would make it impossible 
 to "work" his story, as Mr. James would say himself, 
 "for all it is worth." 
 
V 
 POINT OF VIEW 
 
 The stories of Henry James are records of _seeinpr 
 rather than of doing. That we have seen to be, at any 
 rate, the general impression of the reader. The process 
 of the story is always more or less what Mr. James him- 
 self calls in one case a "process of vision." Of "The 
 Ambassadors" he says, referring to the enlightenment of 
 the main character, "The business of my tale and the 
 march of my action, not to say the precious moral of 
 everything, is just my demonstration of this process of 
 vision." ^ Of "The Spoils of Poynton" he says, referring 
 to the central character, Fleda Vetch, "The progress and 
 march of my tale became and remained that of her under- 
 standing."^ In a story so conceived, a matter of prime 
 importance must naturally be the point of view from 
 which the vision is had,/ the source of information or the 
 medium through which what is to be seen is conveyed 
 to the reader. There is no matter in which James has 
 shown greater care for technique./ 
 
 Mr. James is seldom or never, in his later work, the 
 "omniscient author." He has a great scorn for this 
 slovenly way of telling a story. It is only in his earlier 
 work that he sometimes allows himself to step in and 
 give special information to the reader, — information 
 which he could not have had from the person or persons 
 who are for the moment most concerned. Quite as little 
 
 1 Vol. XXI, p. vi. 
 
 2 Vol. X, p. xiii. 
 
Point of View $1 
 
 does he employ the device of having the story told in 
 the first person by the leading character, with its great 
 initial sacrifice of plausibility. His austere muse will 
 not consent to that "terrible fluidity of self-revelation" 
 that characterizes narratives like "Gil Bias" and "David 
 Copperfield." * 
 
 This matter of the point of view is a most complex 
 and difficult one, and the practice of story-tellers is mani- 
 fold. It would be impossible to give a brief summary 
 of the common usage, even if one had made a sufficiently 
 careful survey of the field to feel certain of all the factSi 
 But I can give some illustration of methods carefully 
 avoided by James. And it will be interesting to take 
 examples from the work of an earlier master to whom 
 James owes a considerable debt* 
 
 Hawthorne, in "The Marble Faun," is quite innocent 
 of the scruples that so constantly exercise the conscience 
 of the later American novelist. Not only does he indulge 
 in the most extended descriptions and disquisitions, in 
 which no pretense is made of following the discoveries " 
 and impressions of the characters; but he often rends 
 abruptly the tissue of their impressions to throw in some 
 observation of his own. In scene after scene, again, the 
 author starts out telling his story from the point of view 
 of one of the characters, recording simply what may be 
 taken in by him, only to shift suddenly for a moment or 
 for good to the point of view of another. In the scene 
 of "The Marble Saloon," it is Kenyon who is first shown 
 us observing the behavior and listening to the words of 
 Miriam. It was he who watched for her arrival, he to 
 whom "the feebleness of her step was apparent," who 
 
 « See Vol. XXI, pp. xvii-xix. 
 
 * Equally striking illustrations may be found in work so recent 
 as that of Mr. Hardy. 
 
$8 The Method of Henry James 
 
 "was startled to perceive" such an impulse of hers, who 
 "could not but marvel" at such another. But we are not 
 so sure of the point of view when we read, "She blushed, 
 and turned away her eyes, knowing that there was more 
 surprise and joy in their dewy glances, than any man save 
 one ought to detect there." And in the following para- 
 graph, there is an indubitable and disconcerting shift of 
 the point of view. "Kenyon could not but marvel at the 
 subjection into which this proud and self-dependent 
 woman had wilfully flung herself, hanging her life upon 
 the chance of an angry or favorable regard from a person 
 who, a little while before, had seemed the plaything of a 
 moment. But, in Miriam's eyes, Donatello was always, 
 thenceforth, invested with the tragic dignity of their hour 
 of crime; and, furthermore, the keen and deep insight 
 with which her love endowed her [here we encounter 
 the "omniscient author" in person] enabled her to know 
 him far better than he could be known by ordinary obser- 
 vation." It is as if, in a dance, the spotlight, which has 
 been resting long on the man, should be shifted for one 
 intense moment to the figure of his companion. In the 
 scene of "The Bronze PontiflF's Benediction," the spot- 
 light is constantly shifting from one to another of the 
 three performers, then to the "mob" of onlookers, to rest 
 finally, for the curtain, on all three performers in a group. 
 In some cases the master of the puppets intrudes him- 
 self with the most amazing disregard for illusion, the 
 highest impudence, as it would be judged by more modem 
 showmen. In the chapter entitled "Reminiscences of 
 Miriam," we have been following the track of Hilda's 
 thoughts. It has been difficult to distinguish just what 
 are Hilda's own reflections and what the interpretations 
 and explanations of the author. But there is no doubt 
 as to the line of distinction at this point : "Recurring to 
 
Point of View sp 
 
 the delinquencies of which she fancied (we say 'fancied' 
 because we do not unhesitatingly adopt Hilda's present 
 view, but rather suppose her misled by her feelings) — 
 of which she fancied herself guilty towards her friend, 
 she suddenly remembered a sealed packet that Miriam 
 had confided to her." Here the author marks the dis- 
 tinction between his own and his character's view of the 
 moral facts. In a later chapter, "A Frolic of the Car- 
 nival," we see him in the act of dangling before us his 
 knowledge of certain material facts upon which he is 
 not yet ready to enlighten us. It is at the moment of 
 Hilda's appearance in the Englishman's balcony during 
 the carnival, after her period of mysterious invisibility, 
 "Whence she had come," says the author, "or where she 
 had been hidden, during this mysterious interval, we can 
 but imperfectly surmise, and do not mean, at present, to 
 make it a matter of formal explanation with the reader. 
 It is better, perhaps, to fancy that she had been snatched 
 away to a land of picture; that she had been straying 
 with Claude in the golden light which he used to shed 
 over his landscapes, but which he could never have beheld 
 with his waking eyes," etc., etc. Thus does the author 
 flout his patient reader, frankly acknowledging his sub- 
 stantial obligation and offering to pay it in the airy coin 
 of poesy. 
 
 Such methods were suitable, it may be, to the easy- 
 going "romance of Monte Beni," a tissue of poetic 
 fancies, in which the characters are but vague symbols 
 of moral truth, and in which, as he tells us himself, the 
 last thing the author wishes to create is an illusion of 
 "reality." They would not do at all for the close-woven 
 psychological tissue of Henry James. \ Considering the 
 sort of eflfect at which he aimed, he could not afford to 
 risk the leakage of illusion (to use a favorite figure of 
 
6o The Method of Henry James 
 
 his own) ; he could not afford to risk that blurring of 
 jefiect caused by the arbitrary change of focusj |'He must 
 take greater pains to conceal his art, and must never allow 
 himself to be caught in the act of composing his s^e 
 jejSfects. I The realist, and above all the psychologist, in 
 'fiction has less margin of profit, as we may say in the 
 language of the market, and is obliged to figure closer 
 
 'in regard to "overhead costs." He comes — at least Mr. 
 James had come — ^to take great pride in his ingenuities of 
 economy. In the choice and maintenance of a point of 
 view, he is seeking a steady consistency of efiEect, the 
 intensity and concentration that come of an exact center- 
 
 .ing of attention upon the chosen plot of consciousness. 
 In the preface to "The Wings of the Dove," he says, 
 "There is no economy of treatment without an adopted, 
 a related point of view, and though I understand, under 
 certain degrees of pressure, a represented community of 
 vision between several parties to the action when it makes 
 for concentration, I understand no breaking up of the 
 register, no sacrifice of the recording consistency, that 
 doesn't rather scatter and weaken."" 
 
 - — In some cases James chose to present his scene in a 
 highly jobjective manner, as it would be followed by an 
 imaginary spectator. In "The Outcry" and "The Awk- 
 ward Age" he will hardly record the slightest subjective 
 reaction of one of his characters without some reference 
 to this postulated observer. "Hugh might at this moment 
 have shown to an initiated eye as fairly elated."* "Un- 
 mistakably — for us at least — our young man was gaining 
 time."^ The great thing is not to go outside the present 
 scene for enlightenment. In "The Awkward Age," he 
 
 "^"-^ 5 Vol. XIX, p. xvi. 
 
 « "The Outcry," p. 143; compare also pp. 177, 211, 227. 
 T Id., p. 85. 
 
Point of View 6i 
 
 tells us, he wished always "to make the presented occasion 
 tell all its story itself, remain shut up in its own presence 
 and yet on that patch of staked-out ground become 
 thoroughly interesting and remain thoroughly clear."* 
 He follows the same plan in "The Outcry." We read of a 
 certain lady that she had a certain gentleman's "an- 
 nounced name ringing in her ears — ^to some eflfect that we 
 are as yet not qualified to discern."* Such is the tone 
 the author assumes to put in his place any reader under- 
 taking to see more than is allowed by the conditions of 
 the exhibition. 
 
 But this is not his happiest way of securing consistency 
 in the point of view. Kis happiest way is one which 
 , admits our following more closely the thoughts and feel- 
 ings of his characters.1 "Again and again, on review," he 
 writes in the preface to the last novel of the series, "the 
 shorter things in especial that I have gathered into this 
 Series have ranged themselves not as my own impersonal 
 account of the affair in hand, but as my account of some- r 
 body's impression of it — ^the terms of this person's access 
 to it arid "estimate of it contributing thus by some fine 
 little law to intensification of interest."" The great charm 
 of such a narrative as "The Spoils of Poynton" resides 
 in that intiriiacy with the mind of Fleda, that sense of 
 identification with her feeling and thought, in all their 
 intensity, in all their delicate shift and play, that comes of 
 this consistency in the point of view. iTames speaks Often 
 in his prefaces of his desire to get himself and his reader 
 "down into the arena" — ^to "live, breathe, converse with 
 the persons engaged in the struggle that provides for the 
 
 * Vol. IX, pp. xvii-xviii. 
 
 » P. 39. 
 
 i«Vol. XXIII, p. V. 
 
62 The Method of Henry James 
 
 others in the circling tiers the entertainment of the 
 game."^* 
 
 The most remarkable feat of Henry James in this 
 order is the record of "What Maisie Knew," in which 
 he chose deliberately for his "register of impressions" 
 the "small expanding consciousness" of a little girl. The 
 story deals with vulgar facts involving passions and 
 relations far beyond the understanding of any little girl, 
 however clever, let alone so innocent and "nice" an under- 
 standing as this one. And yet the whole history is given 
 without appeal to any other source of information than 
 the natural observation of the little girl. This was the 
 challenge of the subject to the artistic temper of Henry 
 James. Given such an observer, he tells us in the preface, 
 the design "would be to make and keep her so limited con- 
 sciousness the very field of my picture while at the same 
 time guarding with care the integrity of the objects 
 represented." As she wouldn't understand much that 
 occurred, the author was obliged to "stretch the matter 
 to what his wondering witness materially and inevitably 
 saw." He determined on "giving it all, the whole situa- 
 tion surrounding her, but . . . giving it only through 
 the occasions and connexions of her proximity and her 
 attention. . . . This would be, to begin with, a plan of 
 absolutely definite and measureable application — ^that in 
 itself always a mark of beauty."^'' 
 
 Not merely the plan of "mea surable ap plication," but 
 the economjr^jil£» means involved in this particular plan 
 was prizedby Mr. James as "in itself always a mark of 
 beauty." Over and over again he lets us know how 
 much he loves to pack his material into the smallest possi- 
 [ ble compass, to make one stroke do duty for several, to 
 
 "Vol. XXIII, p. vi. 
 " Vol. XI, pp. ix-x. 
 
Point of View 63 
 
 secure that intensification of effect which comes of the| 
 double functioning of any given element in the pictorial 
 composition. Such economies are to be secured by 
 various means, but none are more gratifying than those 
 which flow from an ing enio us choic e of a point of v iew. 
 Mr. James notes with no little complacency the way in 
 which, in "The Golden Bowl," the Princess, in addition 
 to playing her part in the drama as required, serves as 
 interpreter to us. Thus "the Princess ... in addition 
 to feeling everything she has to, and to playing her part 
 just in that proportion, duplicates . . . her value and 
 becomes a compositional resource ... as well as a value 
 intrinsic."^^ As usual Mr. James reserves his extremest 
 expressions of satisfaction for the technique of "The 
 Ambassadors," of which the "major propriety," the great 
 "compositional law" was "that of employing but one 
 centre and keeping it all within my hero's consciousness." 
 There were to be plenty of other people with their mo- 
 tives and interests. "But Strether's sense of these things, 
 and Strether's only, should avail me for showing them;^ 
 I should know them but through his more or less groping 
 knowledge of them, since his very gropings would figure 
 among his most interesting motions, and a fMl observance 
 of the rich rigour I speak of would give me more of the 
 effect I should be most 'after' than all other possible 
 observances together. It would give me a large unity, 
 and that in turn would crown me with the grace to which 
 the enlightened story-teller will at any time, for his 
 interest, sacrifice if need be all other graces whatever. 
 I refer of course to the grace of intensity.'"* 
 
 Now the most notable peculiarity of the stories of 
 Henry James — regarding con ception rather than execu- 
 
 "Vol. XXIII, p. vii. 
 "Vol. XXI, p. XV. 
 
64 The Method of Henry James 
 
 tion — is the refined, not to say fine-drawn interpretation 
 of character, of motive and of personal relations. And 
 if the situations and the reactions of character are to 
 be conveyed to the reader exclusively through the con- 
 sciousness of persons in the story, the persons thus serv- 
 I ing as interpreters must necessarily be persons of fine 
 I discrimination, of keen penetration, of delicate sensibility. 
 And this is, I think, almost invariably true.^^ 
 
 As early as the time of "Roderick 'Hudson" James had 
 created such an interpreter in the person of Rowland 
 Mallet. As he says himself, "The centre of interest 
 throughout 'Roderick' is in Rowland Mallet's conscious- 
 ness, and the drama is the very drama of that conscious- 
 ness — ^which I had of course to make sufficiently acute 
 in order to enable it, like a set and lighted scene, to hold 
 the play. ... It had, naturally . . . not to be too acute 
 — which would have disconnected it and made it super- 
 human: the beautiful little problem was to keep it con- 
 nected, connected intimately, with the general human 
 exposure . . . and yet to endow it with such intelligence 
 that the appearances reflected in it, and constituting to- 
 gether there the situation and the 'story,' should become 
 by that fact intelligible."" 
 
 But our best instances of this intelligent intecprete; 
 
 ifrom within are to be found in tlie leading characters 
 
 !of the later stories. Every reader of James has been 
 
 'impressed — some have been bored — ^by the constancy 
 
 ^j'with which the characters bestow upon one another the 
 
 /epithets "wonderful," "beautiful," "complete," "splen- 
 
 iB Even Maisie is all of this, wanting only in maturity and 
 experience to make her a satisfactory recorder of the objective as 
 well as the subjective facts, that is of the incidents themselves 
 as well as her youthful impressions of them. 
 
 i» Vol. I, p. xvii. 
 
 1 
 
Point of View 65 
 
 did," and others to the same eifect. Probably the person 
 most lavishly praised for "wonderful" is Lambert 
 Strether,(and it is no kss competent a judge than Maria 
 Gostrey who thus passes judgment upon his insight and 
 discrimination. It was for similar gifts that Mrs. Gereth 
 made choice of Fleda Vetch for her friend and the 
 depositary of the precious Spoils. Fleda appears from 
 the beginning to be as well endowed as Mrs. Gereth with 
 esthetic and practical intelligence ; and we are made to 
 feel before the end how much she surpasses her patron 
 in moral and spiritual fineness. There is no character 
 in fiction upon whose spiritual intelligence was put a 
 harder and more unrelenting strain ; and it is largely the 
 success with which she supported this strain that gives 
 her little story so high a place among all the novels of 
 James. • Her creator is fully conscious of all that is 
 involved in this fact on the technical side, of the technical 
 problem confronting the artist who undertakes such a 
 subject, and the rewards higher than technical crowning 
 his success. "Once more," in reviewing this work he 
 perceives "that a subject so lighted, a subject residing in 
 somebody's excited and concentrated feeling about some- 
 thing ... has more beauty to give out than under any 
 other style of pressure. [Such is his own somewhat 
 confused combination of figures.] One is confronted 
 obviously thus with the question of the importances ; with 
 that in particular, no doubt, of the weight of intelligent 
 consciousness, consciousness of the whole, or of some- 
 thing ominously like it, that one may decently permit a 
 represented figure to appear to throw. . . . This intelli- 
 gence, an honorable amount of it, on the part of the 
 person to whom one most invites attention, has but to play 
 with sufficient freedom and ease, or call it with the right 
 grace, to guarantee us that quantum of the impression of 
 
66 The Method of Henry James 
 
 beauty which is the most fixed of the possible advantages 
 of our producible effect. It may fail, as a positive pres- 
 ence, on other sides and in other connexions ; but more or 
 less of the treasure is stored safe from the moment such 
 a quality of inward life is distilled, or in other words from 
 the moment so fine an interpretation and criticism as that 
 of Fleda Vetch's [sic^ — to cite the present case — is 
 applied without waste to the surrounding tangle."^^ 
 
 In some of his stories in which he has provided several 
 such intelligences, or at any rate several minds sufficiently 
 suited to act asX'registers," James has experimented with 
 the device of alternating points of view^ This method 
 was adopted in the more objective narrative of "The 
 Tragic Muse," in which not too much is expected of Nick 
 Dormer and Peter Sherringham in the matter of inter- 
 pretation. More distinctive is the work in "The Wings 
 of the Dove," in which if the story must get itself told 
 from at least three different points of view — those of 
 Kate, of Milly and of Merton — it is in point of fact the 
 mental topography of these characters that we are most 
 interested in exploring. In any case the situatioj i seemed 
 to the author one best exhibited now from one side and 
 now from another; and this made a technical problem 
 strongly appealing to the artist in him. "There was the 
 'fun' ... of establishing one's successive centres — of 
 fixing them so exactly that the portions of the subject 
 commanded by them as by happy points of view, and 
 accordingly treated from them, would constitute, so to 
 speak, sufficiently solid blocks of wrought material, 
 squared to the sharp edge, as to have weight and mass 
 and carrying power ; to make for construction, that is, to 
 conduce to effect and to provide for beauty. Such a 
 block, obviously, is the whole preliminary presentation 
 
 1^ Vol. X, pp. xiii-xiv. 
 
Point of View 6^ 
 
 of Kate Croy which, from the first, I recall, absolutely 
 declined to enact itself save in terms of amplitude."^* 
 Mr. James speaks, changing the figure again, of his 
 instinct in this case for the "indirect presentation of his 
 main image" (that is, of Milly) ; this "proceeds obviously 
 from her painter's tenderness of imagination about her, 
 which reduces him to watching her, as it were, through 
 the successive windows of other people's interest in 
 her."" 
 
 It is clear that we have nothing here in common with 
 that arbitrary and unconsidered shift of point of view 
 within the chapter, within the paragraph, that visible 
 manipulation of the puppets from without, which is so 
 great a menace to illusion and intimacy. It is equally 
 clear, however, how much the author pays, in this method, 
 for the privilege of seeing the situation from more sidea. 
 than one. T3.e pays with the loss of that growing intensity, 
 that larger consistency, which derive from uninterrupted 
 Continuity of the same conscious observation such as w^ 
 nave in "Poynton," in "Maisie," in "The Ambassadors,"'^ 
 and — ^to name one instance from the earlier period — in 
 "Roderick Hudson." At any rate, one gets from "The 
 Dove" much less of a sense of unity and distinctness, in 
 the whole, and in many of the parts, than from "Poynton" 
 or "The Ambassadors," or, for that matter, from "The 
 Golden Bowl." "The Golden Bowl" lies, in method, 
 between "The Ambassadors" and "The Dove" ; since here 
 there is a change in point of view, but just the one change, 
 between the first and second parts of the story. "The 
 whole thing," Mr. James points out in the preface, 
 "remains subject to the register, ever so closely kept, 
 of the consciousness of but two of the characters. The 
 
 i« Vol. XIX, pp. xii-xiii. 
 19 Id., p. xxii. 
 
68 The Method of Henry James 
 
 Prince, in the first half of the book, virtually sees and 
 knows and makes out, virtually represents to himself 
 everything that concerns us. . . . The function of the 
 Princess, in the remainder, matches exactly with hisj 
 the register of her consciousness is as closely kept."^" 
 It may well be partly this large division, in which one 
 entire half of the story is given to the development of the 
 situation in each of these minds, and in which the narra- 
 tive does not keep making a fresh start, as in "The Dove," 
 that accounts for the greater force and distinctness of 
 effect in "The Golden Bowl." 
 
 Readers well acquainted with James's shorter stories 
 will meantime have been wondering at my failure to 
 mention another device employed in so many of his tales. 
 I mean the introduction of some observer not concerned 
 personally, or but slightly concerned, in the incidents 
 recorded. This person is not, like Strether, an important 
 actor ; he is simply the narrator and interpreter of all that 
 we are offered. He is often, says Mr. James, "but an 
 unnamed, unin,troduced and (save by right of intrinsic 
 wit) unwarranted participant, the impersonal author's 
 concrete deputy or delegate," etc.^^ Yet by means of him, 
 the effect i s at least made objectively pictorial without 
 any recourse to the "mere muffled majesty of irrespon- 
 sible 'authorship.' " Through him the facts are given 
 with greater authority than can attach to the "omnis- 
 cience" of any writer of fiction. 
 
 One at once recalls instances of this comparatively 
 unconcerned observer in tales from every period except 
 the very latest. Such are the persons who tell the stories 
 of "A Passionate Pilgrim," "The Madonna of the 
 Future," "The Pension Beaurepas" (all products of the 
 
 20 Vol. XXIII, pp. vi-vii. 
 
 21 Id., p. V. 
 
Point of View 6p 
 
 70's) ; those of "The Patagonia," "The Author of Bel- 
 traffio," "The Aspern Papers" (all from the 80's) ; those 
 of "The Death of the Lion" and "Europe" (from the 
 90's) . In all of these tsiles the account is given in the first 
 person, since the objections to the autobiographic method 
 do not hold when there is no question of the revelation 
 of one's own character and affairs. Sometimes, however, 
 as in "Pandora," "The Liar," and "The Two Faces," the 
 third person is used even of this objective observer of 
 the scene. 
 
 Of course this observer is not represented as an intru- 
 sive person with no more legitimate interest in the story 
 than our universal human curiosity. That would be to 
 make him too disagreeable for the purpose ; or it would be 
 too obviously a device for plausibility. NyHis relation to 
 the other characters must always be a natural one. The 
 situation has come to his notice, in the first instance, in 
 a perfectly natural manner ; and if he goes on to pursue 
 his inquiry, this is the result of a friendly or professional 
 interest proper enough. In a considerable number of 
 cases he is a man of letters for whom the interest in a 
 literary phenomenon comes to reinforce his friendly sym- 
 pathy for the persons concerned. Often, as in "The 
 Figure in the Carpet," he has some little axe of his own 
 to grind; sometimes, as in "The Beldonald Holbein," 
 a little grudge of his own to gratify. And so, by insen- 
 sible degrees, this character passes over into that of the 
 interested observer, the actor himself. But we are at 
 present considering the observer whose concern in the 
 action remains slight and secondary. 
 
 It will be observed that this device of the non-interested 
 observer is used by James only in his shorter stories, or 
 tales, and not in his novels. The reason is not far to 
 seek. The real inwardness of any situation, the intimate 
 
JO The Method of Henry James 
 
 t 
 
 personal feeling, cannot be rendered thus from the out- 
 side. But then it is scarcely possible for the intimate 
 ersonal feeling to be rendered, for the real inwardness 
 of a situation to be developed, by whatever means, in 
 any but the longest of tales. It takes time to get up 
 momentum in the subjective world, to achieve the effect 
 of weight and depth of feeling. And it is clear that the 
 tales of Henry James are very seldom as subjective in 
 method or intention as his novels. They are not so full 
 and deep in-gonception as the novels. They are but epi- 
 sodes, fragments, glimpses of life caught on the wing. 
 And they can often best be realized through the narrative 
 of a comparative outsider. In the later stories, novel and 
 tale alike, the subjective tendency is much greater. And it 
 is remarkable how little use is made in the twentieth 
 century tales of the device which was earlier such a 
 favorite. "The Beast in the Jungle," "Crapy Cornelia," 
 "The Bench of Desolation" — these stories follow from 
 within the feeling and fortunes of the characters most 
 concerned.'^ ~"~ — ., 
 
 Whether the situation is presented from without or 
 from within, James has frequent recourse to another 
 device for throwing additional light upon it. T his is th e 
 introduction of a confidante — for this person is almos t 
 im ariablv a woman — with whom the fgeneral ly^male') 
 observ er or actor may discuss the situation, comB aring 
 note s and checking up theories . This device is common 
 ;in the novels and not infrequent in the tales. There are 
 hints of this character in the early period, such as Mrs. 
 Draper in "Madame de Mauves," Mrs. Tristram in "The 
 American," Blanche Adney in "The Private Life." But 
 
 22 The two last-named published in "The Finer Grain" (1910), 
 and first appearing in magazines in 1909, too late to be included 
 in the New York edition. 
 
Point of View Ji 
 
 she becomes much more important, and maintains her 
 importance more steadily throughout the course of the 
 story, in the later period : witness Mrs. Munden in "The 
 Beldonald Holbein," Mrs. Wix in "Maisie," Maria Gos- 
 trey in "The Ambassadors," Mrs. Assingham in "The 
 Golden Bowl." It is Mrs. Munden who first gives his 
 cue to the portrait-painter who tells the story as to the 
 leading motive of Lady Beldonald, and who follows with 
 him each stage in the situation resulting from the impor- 
 tation of her ugly-beautiful American cousin. It is with 
 Mrs. Wix that little Maisie works out the moral problem 
 involvedJn the relation of her step-father and her step- 
 mother. "V* is Maria Gostrey who gives Strether his 
 gradual initiation into the spirit of "Europe" and who 
 receives his regular reports on the progress of his curious 
 embassy. It is to Mrs. Assingham that the Prince 
 Amerigo brings the perplexities occasioned by his mar- 
 riage into so different a world from that in which he has 
 been bred, fr ^hese persons do not tend to confuse t he 
 po int of view. They serve rather, to strengthen the light 
 thrown ti iffl" fVif gitnarinn iynm the mind of the chie f 
 observer. Thev a re .his rn nfederates, acting and abo ve 
 all making observations - in his interest. They give infor - 
 
 tmitMIILJBJ S^ gC^gtin n ■ ni.ltlmiit wtiirti Vip rr»n1 d hardly 
 
 arrive at a proper_understandingjQfjhe,ja&e. They set 
 him right when he goes astray. Above all, as sympa- 
 thetic and intelligent listeners, they encourage him to 
 express in worcjsrrhis "View of the case he is observing 
 and of his. own ^position in relation to it.'^hey are thus 
 serving him and the author at the s^me tim^ They serve 
 to transfex the-rejrord from |te mind, to the tdhgue of the 
 ob^fecrer, to"3ramatize Ihe point of view, as it were, 
 'realizing- it, or-ebjeetiiyingjt in speech, and so rendering 
 it fit for the pufposes of fictnip. 
 
VI 
 DIALOGUE 
 
 The confidante bears her part in the drama almost 
 exclusively in the way of talk. She bears a very large 
 part, especially in the later period. And this brings to 
 mind what is one of the most remarkable features of the 
 stories of James, above all in this later period. That is 
 the peculiar character and function of the dialogue. One 
 need have no hesitation in saying that the dialogue is one 
 of the strong points in the novels of James — ^providing 
 one is prepared to explain the statement. 
 
 A great disappointment is in store for anyone coming 
 to the dialogue of James in the expectation of finding 
 those features which make the peculiar attraction of the 
 dialogue of novelists in general. His forte does not lie 
 in this direction, or in these directions. In Thackeray, 
 one principal charm of the talk is the highly colored and 
 amusing reproduction of "manners," — ^the varying de- 
 grees of breeding, of social elevation ; the ignorances and 
 [gnobberies, the pride and sycophancy, of the characters. 
 In Dickens we have the widest range of drollery in the 
 manner of speech, — the jerky puppet-utterance of a Mr. 
 Jingle or a Betsy Trotwood, the humor and impudence of 
 a Sam Weller, the quaint solecism of his low-life charac- 
 ters. In Hardy we have a more poetical rendering of 
 the quaintness of rustic conversation. In Meredith we 
 are dazzled with the wit of the drawing-room and the 
 erudition of the library ; in Scott with the heroic audacity 
 or the noble dignity of speech of historical personages. 
 In Alexander Dumas (pere), we run through page on 
 
Dialogue 7J 
 
 page of "snappy" dialogue, in which a Gascon swagger 
 and the constant "springing" of surprises keep us forever 
 enlivened and on the qui vive. In almost all the standard 
 novels, the "great" scenes are those in which some stren- 
 uous conflict of wills comes to a head in a "crack-crack" 
 of words, — each speaker laying down, if I may change 
 the figure, trump card after trump card until the hand is 
 played out. 
 
 But James very seldom draws upon any of these funds 
 of interest. The contrast of cultures — in the Thack- 
 erayan sense — is seldom a part of his subject. Rustics 
 and eccentrics are almost wholly wanting. He is at no 
 pains to make his characters witty or grandiloquent or' 
 magnanimous in any spectacular manner. And "great" 
 scenes of the sort described above are outside his scope 
 and aim. There are strenuous conflicts of will ; but they 
 are carried on between masked combatants, concerned 
 above all to prevent a violent explosion, or any exposure 
 to the gaze of the vulgar. When they play their trump 
 card, it is not with a great smack down upon the table. 
 They drop it rather out of their voluminous coat-sleeves 
 and slip it on the green baize with discreet and apologetic 
 gesture. Thus in general we may say of the dialoguel 
 of James that in comparison with the work of the great! 
 masters of fiction in English, it is colorless and feature-i 
 less, wanting in variety and intensity of flavor, littla 
 given to rendering the "characters" and surface-effect 
 of the drama. Its merits are of another order. • 
 
 It is true that, in his earlier work, Mr. James made 
 many experiments in the more usual modes. In "The 
 Bostonians," we meet at Miss Birdseye's gathering in 
 South Boston a group of eccentrics done, as nearly as the 
 American author knew how, in the manner of Dickens. 
 In "Roderick Hudson," in "The American," even in 
 
J4 The Method of Henry James 
 
 "The Portrait of a Lady," we have characters of the 
 milder Thackeray infusion, but still recognizable as Vic- 
 torian "humorists." In the earlier chapters of "The 
 American,"^ the author has devoted considerable care to 
 rendering in conversation the "character" of the two 
 Americans in Paris, Mr. Tristram and Christopher New- 
 man, — ^the vulgar sprightliness and man-of-the-world 
 assurance of the one; the freshness, the directness, the 
 quaint humor and abounding energy of the other; the 
 American coUoquialispi and want of acquaintance with 
 old-world standards of them both. Much is made too of 
 the degrees of proficiency, or want of proficiency, of 
 Newman in his use of the French language. Similarly 
 the author has "laid himself out" on Mile. Noemie Nioche 
 and her father, types smelling strongly of Thackeray's 
 Boulogne, — with which, by the way, in the book and out, 
 James had been saturated from the earliest days. 
 ■'' Somewhat cruder is the humorous touch upon charac- 
 ters in "Roderick Hudson," the earliest of all the novels 
 later acknowledged. There is Mr. Barnaby Striker, the 
 Northampton attorney, of quaint gestures and attitudes, 
 whose expressed view of his own career and character 
 faintly reminds us of Mr. Gradgrind in "Hard Times." 
 There is Mr. Leavenworth, patron of art after his retire- 
 ment from the proprietorship of large mines of borax in 
 the Middle West, whose pompous manner of speech 
 smacks not a little of the earlier Victorian style. "You'll 
 find me eager to patronize our indigenous talent," he says, 
 for example. "You may be sure that I've employed a 
 native architect for the large residential structure that 
 I'm erecting on the banks of the Ohio. I've sustained 
 a considerable loss [referring, if I remember rightly, to 
 the death of his wife] ; but are we not told that the office 
 1 On the other hand, Mrs. Bread speaks as we all might wish to. 
 
^ Dialogue 75 
 
 of art is second only to that of religion?"'' More 
 specifically of the Thackeray tradition are the adven- 
 turers and adventuresses who figure in this book. There 
 is the tropical envoy described in the thirteenth chapter, 
 with the other "queer fish" whose company was for a 
 time frequented by Roderick, although they were "out- 
 side of Rowland's well-ordered circle." But these 
 characters make no talk. Among the more important 
 characters of Thackerayan flavor who do make talk are 
 Madame Grandoni, the Cavaliere and Mrs. Light, not to 
 press the more remote resemblance of Christina Light 
 to, say, Blanche Amory. The vulgarity and social ambi- 
 tion, the superstition and unscrupulousness, the plausible 
 good-nature of Christina's mother make her remind us, 
 as she reminded Madame Grandoni, "of some extrava- 
 gant old woman in a novel — in something of Hofmann or 
 Balzac, something even of your own Thackeray." * Her 
 garrulity, extensively illustrated in the text, reminds us 
 of Thackeray where it does not remind us more of Jane 
 Austen. 
 
 Among the other more common uses of the dialogue 
 to be found in "Roderick Hudson," we may mention the 
 great "scene," in the twenty-first chapter, in which 
 Roderick so frightens his mother and distresses his 
 fiancee with the frantic confession of his failure. There 
 is also the "high-brow" discussion of art in the sixth 
 chapter, reminding one of "The Marble Faun," and not 
 at all of James's later work. And there are instances 
 likewise of what must have been intended for "witty" 
 conversation, introduced to give the tone, or one of the 
 
 2 Vol. I, p. 193. 
 
 3 Id., p. 164. Again some woman met by Roderick at the 
 Kursaal reminded Rowland of Thackeray's Madame de Cruch=- 
 ecassee ; see p. 139. 
 
7<J The Method of Henry James 
 
 tones, of smart society. The following interchange, for 
 example, takes place in the course of a stroll in a Roman 
 garden. Present are Roderick and Christina, Mrs. Light, 
 the Cavaliere and the Prince. 
 
 "I should have liked to lie down on the grass and go to 
 sleep," Christina added. "But it would have been un- 
 heard of." 
 
 "Oh, not quite," said the Prince in English, with a 
 fine acquired distinctness. "There was already a Sleep- 
 ing Beauty in the Wood." 
 
 "Charming !" cried Mrs. Light. "Do you hear that, my 
 dear?" 
 
 "When the Prince says a brilliant thing, it would be 
 a pity to lose it," said the girl. "Your servant, sir!" 
 And she smiled at him with a grace that might have 
 reassured him if he had thought her compliment ambigu- 
 ous.* 
 
 It is obviously not in any of these directions that we 
 are to look for peculiar excellence in the dialogue of 
 Henry James. He did well to recognize the inferiority 
 of his performances in the manner of Dickens or Thack- 
 eray or whatsoever humorous or draAiatic English 
 novelist. The characteristic dialogue of his maturer work 
 is of quite a different order. The speakers, in the first 
 place, are verylittle differentiated as to language and 
 manner of speech, or, for that matter, as to any of the 
 more obvious marks of character. They are all of 
 approximately the same degree of culture and intelli- 
 gence. They are generally persons of great social expert- 
 ness. There is nothing formal or pedantic in their 
 language, nor on the other hand any tincture of solecism, 
 dialect or localism, unless it be those of London. They 
 speak almost without exception <what we may suppose 
 
 * P. 235. 
 
Dialogue 77 
 
 to be the purest of London drawing-room slang. This 
 must be quaUfied to the extent that they are often making 
 points so fine they are obliged to take on some of James's 
 own metaphysical vocabulary of analysis. Their sen- 
 tences have often the double involution of metaphysics 
 and extemporaneous colloquialism. They are sometimes 
 long, frequently subject to qualifying parenthesis, abrupt 
 transition, and breaking off without completion. These 
 eager interlocutors are forever interrupting, politely 
 contradicting, or earnestly confirming one another's 
 statements. 
 
 These conversations may be divided into twg jnore or 
 less distinct groups, according as the speakers are to be 
 classed as c onfederates or as antagoni sts ; although we 
 must take into account also a large number of scenes in 
 which it is hard to say whether the character of con- 
 federacy or of antagonism predominates in the relation. 
 
 In extent and frequency of occurrence,Jlie_dialQgug.of 
 confederates is much in the -Jead. And this we may 
 consider the pure and simple type of all dialogue in the 
 later period. This is the chief means by which the author 
 develops-liis idea , or b r'tif rs out his pictu re. It is gen- 
 erally in these conversations that we are informed as to 
 the incidents or objective facts which make the backbone 
 as well as the animated flesh of the ordinary novel, but 
 which in James are relegated to the secondary position 
 of subject-matter for talk. Indeed one of the chie f 
 functions of dialogue is here the gradual reve lation of 
 t he facts,o £-the s tory. — ^bo th the primarv data, on whic h 
 the story is based, and also thf f"'^^^''- Jn'-iHpntg w|^ifVi 
 tak e place with in the proper limits nf tt^f^ ''^"^ It is 
 thus, for example, that, during the play in London, 
 Maria Gostrey gets out of Strether, bit by bit, with 
 judicious questions, the antecedent facts of the story 
 
Y8 The Method of Henry James 
 
 of "The Ambassadors," — the character of Mrs. New- 
 some and Strether's connection with her, the wonderful 
 business possibilities at WooUett and the general situation 
 there, WooUett's view of Paris, and the idea of the 
 embassy. It is thus that, in their later meetings, 
 Strether reports to her from time to time whatever dis- 
 coveries he has made in Paris. It is thus that, near the 
 end of "The Wings of the Dove," Densher gets out of 
 Kate Croy the main facts of the story in Venice as 
 regards Lord Mark. r 
 
 Of course this use of the dialogue is not confined to 
 James. But no English novelist, I think, has reduced 
 it to such a system and made it so organic and indispen- 
 sable a part of his method. They introduce it every 
 little while in lumps as they feel the need of sweetening 
 the drink. It is but an alternative means of relating the 
 facts, displaying the characters or enlivening the action. 
 In James it is much more deliberately used as a technical 
 device. It is his trick for giving a dramatic cast to the 
 narrative, for makingLJiie-^fear-aGteis^j£UJlieir-own_stoiy. 
 
 But the f a cts are soon tol d — when once the author is 
 ready to let us have them. And much more "of "the 
 d^i^ue is "givieir up ~VS fh€l3iscusE 6n of the factsj^ to 
 the process of their assimilation. "What were the 
 Jfacts?" is a question that qu ickly gives place J:o the more 
 imp orta nt q uestions : " What do they mean ?" "How do 
 thevL- affect the situation? " and (ij" we" are more than 
 •m<H'e..oh<;prYPt-<; p ersonally unco nce rned) "Where are we 
 then?" In^The Golden Bowl," the Prince has Two 
 "confederates" — Charlotte Stant, his actual partner in 
 guilt; and Mrs. Assingham, who in the first instance is 
 merely the confidante of his perplexities and anxieties, but 
 who becomes, in the course of the action, a critic to whom 
 he and Charlotte must give an account of themselves. 
 
Dialogue jg 
 
 The culmination of the first part of the story is in Book 
 Three, where we are shown the four-cornered "situation" 
 already constituted and needing only to be made clear. 
 In the first chapters of this book, Charlotte and the 
 Prince take turns in explaining it to Mrs. Assingham at 
 the Ambassador's ball. In the third chapter Mrs. Assing- 
 ham discusses what she has heard with the Colonel as 
 they drive home. In the several ensuing chapters, it is 
 the Prince and Charlotte who, in a succession of meet- 
 ings a deux, work out to their own satisfaction what 
 they choose to consider the beautiful completeness and 
 symmetry of a situation in which all four parties are 
 suited. In the final chapters of this third book, we learn 
 from the discussions of Mrs. Assingham and the Colonel 
 that a new factor has come in to upset the equation. 
 Maggie's eyes have at last been opened to the presence 
 of evil in the world, and she is now setting about really 
 to secure the man whom she has married. In this quiet 
 and indirect way we have been shown the climax of 
 the story and its turning point, — the turning of this 
 massive tide of human feeling and desire. There has 
 been no attempt to exploit the "dramatic" aspects of the 
 situation, the values for show and sensation. There has 
 been consequently nothing showy or spectacular in the 
 dialogue. It is t he significance of t^ ?, drama up on whic h 
 
 author a,nd Cha,rar.terf j^** ttimpH ail thpir attpntinn ; and 
 
 the talk inWhich the significance has been worked out 
 naturally reflects the essentiallv intel lectual char-acter -of 
 the_2rocess_ 
 
 Whether between confederates or antagonists, the gace^ 
 of the talk is typically very slow, with occasional bursts 
 of rapid fire in the exchange of views. 
 
 Between antagonists, it is a game they are playing, 
 say a game of chess, in which each move must be studied 
 
8o The Method of Henry James 
 
 with intensest concentration upon the manifold contin- 
 gencies involved. 
 
 Between confederates the process may be represented 
 by the figure of a puzzle-picture which they are putting 
 together with one another's help, opposed only in the 
 spirit of emulation in which one or the other fits in his 
 piece. Between plays they are always giving one another 
 significant looks, looks of inquiry or understanding, or 
 even looks that amount to a move in the game, conveying 
 as they often do more tha n the. spnli;ffl ■yynr.d. It is a 
 close and exacting occupation, taxing to the full the intel- 
 lectual faculties of these partners. We are constantly 
 being told how well they "fo llaw^one -another, or how 
 one of them receives a momentary "check." In this 
 co-operative game, a piece once placed is not necessarily 
 put down for good, but may be taken back upon" sugges- 
 tion from one's companion, and another tried in its place. 
 It is thus that is developed a special variety of la lk 
 peculiar to the char acters of James, with a thousand 
 recurring tricks or mannerisms If you please. Itis 
 often conducted by question and aa s^"^''.'' One inquires 
 first for the facts, and then the other offers, in the form 
 of question, a tentative explanation of the facts, to be 
 confirmed or to be refuted. The remark of one is taken 
 up by the other, repeated with or without variation, and 
 carried further. The ball is tossed from one to tfie other 
 down the length of the field, and at last lodged in the 
 basket with the finality of "there you are !" The refer- 
 ence of pronouns is often misunderstood, or in doubt, and 
 we are then set right and carried further by our very 
 mistake. Or else, the reference being unmistakable, the 
 other party to the dialogue deliberately changes the pro- 
 noun and so throws some new and interesting light on the 
 connection. By this means speech is tied to speech, all 
 
Dialogue 8i 
 
 down the page, and over the page, by a sort of logical 
 liaison. 
 
 To give an idea of this dialectic game of confederates, 
 I cannot do better than transcribe portions of a typical 
 conversation between Strether and Maria Gostrey from 
 the eleventh book of "The Ambassadors." I shall take 
 the liberty of italicizing words and phrases that blaze the 
 trail of the argument, as well as writing in capitals those 
 which emphasize the act and process of thought. 
 Strether and Maria are discussing her tentative sugges- 
 tion that Chad should pay his mother a short visit in 
 WooUett. 
 
 "Why doesn't he pay his mother a visit? Even a week, 
 at this good moment, would do." 
 
 "My dear lady," Strether replied— and HE HAD IT 
 even to himself SURPRISINGLY READY— "my dear 
 lady, his mother has paid HIM a visit." [He refers to 
 the coming of Mrs. Newsome's daughter, Sarah Pocock.] 
 "Mrs. Newsome has been with him, this month, with an 
 intensity that I'm sure he has thoroughly felt; he has 
 lavishly entertained her, and she has let him have her 
 thanks. Do you suggest he shall go back for more of 
 them?" 
 
 Well, SHE SUCCEEDED after a little IN SHAK- 
 ING IT OFF. "I SEE. It's what you don't suggest— 
 what you haven't suggested. And you know." 
 
 "So would you, my dear," he kindly said, "if you had 
 so much as seen her." 
 
 "As seen Mrs. Newsome?" 
 
 "No, Sarah — which, both for Chad and for myself, has 
 served all the purpose." 
 
 "And served it in a manner," she RESPONSIVELY 
 MUSED, "so extraordinary!" 
 
 "Well, you see," he partly explained, "what it comes 
 to is that she's all cold thought — ^which Sarah could 
 serve to us cold without its really losing anything. So 
 it is that we know what she thinks of us." 
 
82 The Method of Henry James 
 
 MARIA HAD FOLLOWED, but SHE HAD AN 
 ARREST. "What I've never made out, if you come 
 to that, is what you think — I mean you personally — of 
 HER. Don't you so much, when all's said, as care a 
 little?" 
 
 This clue, followed in the same logical but labyrinthine 
 manner, leads them to the fact of his being thrown over 
 by Mrs. Newsome. And they "work out" together the 
 character of Mrs. Newsome, and what must have been 
 her view of Strether and of her son Chad. , 
 
 SHE TURNED IT OVER, but as hoping to clarify 
 much rather than to harmonise. "The thing is that I 
 suppose you've been disappointing — " 
 
 "Quite from the first of my arrival? I dare say. I 
 admit / was surprising even to myself." 
 
 "And then of course," Maria went on, "I had much 
 to do -ivith it." 
 
 "With my being surprising — f" 
 
 "That will do," she laughed, "if you're too delicate to 
 call it MY being! Naturally," she added, "you came 
 over more or less for surprises." 
 
 "Naturally!" — he valued the reminder. 
 
 "But they were to have been all for you" — she CON- 
 TINUED TO PIECE IT OUT— "and none of them for 
 her." 
 
 Once more he stopped before her [he had been pacing 
 up and down in the manner usual with him in these 
 exciting moments of excogitation] as if she had touched 
 the point. "That's just her difficulty — that she doesn't 
 admit surprises," etc. [She has her mind entirely made 
 up.] "She's filled as full, packed as tight, as she'll hold, 
 and if you wish to get anything more or different either 
 out or in — " 
 
 "You've got to make over altogether the woman her- 
 self?" 
 
 "What it comes to," said Strether, "is that you've got 
 morally and intellectually to get rid of her." 
 
Dialogue 83 
 
 They continue to discuss Mrs. Newsome and her point 
 of view, and two pages later we see Strether "coming up 
 in another place." He explains that Mrs. Newsome had 
 made up her mind that he was going to discover "hor- 
 rors" in Paris, and that it didn't "suit her book" when 
 he failed to discover them. 
 
 "... That was her disappointment." 
 
 "You mean you were to have found Chad himself 
 horrible?" 
 
 "I was to have found the woman." 
 
 "Horrible?" 
 
 "Found her as she imagined her." And Strether 
 paused as if for his own expression of it he could add 
 no touch to that picture. 
 
 His companion HAD meanwhile THOUGHT. "She 
 imagined stupidly — so it comes to the same thing." 
 
 "Stupidly? Oh!" said Strether. 
 
 But she insisted. "She imagined meanly." 
 
 He had it, however, better. "It couldn't but be 
 ignorantly." 
 
 "Well, intensity with ignorance — ^what do you want 
 worse?" 
 
 "This question might have held him, but he let it pass." 
 
 "Sarah isn't ignorant — now; she keeps up the theory 
 of the horrible." 
 
 "Ah but she's intense — aiid that by itself will do some- 
 times as well. H it doesn't do, in this case, at any rate, 
 to deny that Marie's charming, it will do at least to deny 
 that she's good." 
 
 "What I claim is that she's good for Chad." 
 
 "You don't daiw— SHE SEEMED TO LIKE IT 
 CLEAR— that she's good for YOU." 
 
 "But," he continued without heeding. "That's what I 
 wanted them to come out for — ^to see for themselves if 
 she's bad for him." 
 
 "And now that they've done so they won't admit that 
 she's good even for anything?" 
 
 "They do think" Strether presently admitted, "that 
 
84 The Method of Henry James 
 
 she's on the whole about as bad for me. But they're 
 consistent of course, inasmuch as they've their clear view 
 of what's good for both' of us." 
 
 "For you, to begin with"— Maria, ALL RESPON- 
 SIVE, confined the question for the moment — "to elim- 
 inate from your existence and if possible even from your 
 memory the dreadful creature that / must gruesomely 
 shadow forth for them, even more than to eliminate the 
 distincter evil — thereby a little less portentous — of the 
 person whose confederate you've suffered yourself to 
 become. However, that's comparatively simple. You 
 can easily, at the worst, after all, give me up." 
 
 "I can easily, at the worst, after all, give you up." The 
 irony was so obvious that it needed no care. "I can easily 
 at the worst, after all, even forget you." 
 
 "Call that then workable. But Mr. Newsome has 
 much more to forget. How can HE do it?" 
 
 "Ah THERE AGAIN WE ARE! That's just what 
 I was to have made him do; just where I was to have 
 worked with him and helped." 
 
 These passages of linked remark and rejoinder, of co- 
 operative and systematic exploration, are typical of the 
 dialogue in the later stories whenever the persons engaged 
 have an identity of interest, being purely what I have 
 called confederates. When they are antagonists, or when 
 at least they have some opposition of interest, some need 
 for caution and reserve — as is the case, for example, with 
 Fleda Vetch and Owen Gereth — certain modifications 
 necessarily will appear. But even in such cases, the 
 dialogue often conforms more nearly to this type than to 
 the more usual types of dialogue in novels. 
 
 One point should be made before we go on to the 
 observation of these modified forms of dialogue. It is 
 by no means mere inquisitiveness, nor morbid self-con- 
 sciousness, that inspires the characters so. discussing 
 themselves and others. For they almost invariably have 
 
Dialogue 85 
 
 a stake in the game quite sufficient to justify their demand 
 for information. This fact seems to me to be ignored 
 by Mr. Littell in his most interesting comment on this 
 aspect of the later novels. "Each of his later novels," 
 says Mr. Littell," "is peopled by protagonists who watch 
 themselves and one another, and by minor characters 
 who watch the protagonists sleeplessly. They are not 
 more interested than I, these minor characters, in the 
 great relation we are studying together with such minute- 
 ness." And Mr. Littell finds it difficult to reconcile this 
 "remorseless inquisitiveness" with "any remotest regard 
 for the questioners' own notions of distinction." Now 
 Mr. Littell has certainly characterized very neatly one 
 pf the most striking features of these stories — ^he is 
 discussing specifically the "four supreme hovels," "The 
 Awkward Age," "The Wings of the Dove," "The Ambas- 
 sadors" and "The Golden Bowl"— the intense light of 
 observation from a dozen directions that beats upon every 
 situation. But I am at a loss to know what particular 
 characters he may have in mind who are not more 
 "interested" than himself in what they are observing. 
 Not Maria Gostrey, the minor character who does the 
 observing in "The Ambassadors." She has certainly 
 been given the utmost license and plenty of motive for 
 her inquisitiveness by being made the confidante and 
 assistant of Strether in his embassy, — ^not to speak of the 
 presumption that she is in love with him. Not Milly 
 Theale's cdmpanion nor Aunt Maud in "The Dove." 
 Not surely the Duchess nor Mr. Longdon in "The Awk- 
 ward Age." Nor finally can it be Mrs. Assingham in 
 "The Golden Bowl," who spends so much of her time 
 discussing with her husband the situation of Maggie and 
 Charlotte, the Prince and Mr. Verver. We cannot surely 
 » "The New Republic," March 11, 1916. 
 
86 The Method of Henry James 
 
 lose sight of the fact that she was from the start the 
 friend and confidante of the Prince, that he had invited 
 her in so many words to be his "consort" on the strange 
 voyage of his marriage, cind that later on Maggie too 
 had come to her for light and help. She had to under- 
 stand the situation, the good woman, because she was 
 obliged to "meddle," and she was obliged to meddle, 
 among other ^hings, the author is at great paips to let 
 us know, in order to avoid the "louche" appearance of 
 having conspired to render over-friendly services to the 
 Prince in getting him married to the rich American. The 
 only person I can think of in all the later stories who is 
 a mere gossip is the man who tells the story of "The 
 Sacred Fount"; and even he has grace enough to try to 
 put his curiosity in the light of a general or philosophical 
 interest in human reactions. And we must do Mr. James 
 the justice of remembering that he did not include this 
 story in the canon. It is more than likely that he had 
 grave doubts himself as to the real "distinction" of this 
 character. In general, however, his remorseless inquisi- 
 tors have good reason for being remorseless. And it 
 is this fact that gives to their talk a dignity greater than 
 that of a puzzle or a game of chess. It gives to it some 
 of the deeper human interest of drama. 
 
VII 
 DRAMA 
 
 The exceptional importance and the systematic use of 
 the dialogue suggest the playwright's method of telling 
 his story. But we do not bestow the term "dramatic" 
 upon scenes and situations which fail to show a marked 
 opposition of wills. The dramatic character is naturally 
 intenser whenever the persons approach the relation of 
 antagonists. 
 
 There are many degrees to this approach in the stories 
 of James, as may be seen best in those earlier novels of 
 the final period, "The Spoils of Poynton," "The Awk- 
 ward Age" and "The Sacred Fount." Fleda Vetch may 
 be regarded as the antagonist of her own lover in so far 
 as she feels in conscience bound to dissimulate her love 
 for him and to prescribe for them both a line of conduct 
 of a rigor beyond his strength. She is still more opposed 
 to the mother of Owen, in spite of the confederacy at first 
 established by her being chosen for a suitable daughter- 
 in-law and custodian of the "spoils." Somewhat like 
 Fleda's relation to Owen is that of Nanda to Vander- 
 bank ; and indeed there is hardly any pair in "The Awk- 
 ward Age" — as, for example, Mrs. Brook and Van, Mrs. 
 Brook and Longdon — who have not ample occasion for 
 the display of caution and resourcefulness in the fencing 
 matches in which they indulge perforce with one another. 
 For while they always go outwardly on the assumption 
 of being confederates, they are really working in each 
 case for different, if not actually opposed, ends. And 
 the universal style is one of strenuous eternal vigilance 
 
88 The Method of Henry James 
 
 and elegant dissimulation under a bland pretense of dis- 
 interested candor. This variety of disguised antagonism 
 finds its simplest case in the conversations of the narrator 
 with Mrs. Briss in "The Sacred Fount." The narrator 
 has no personal interest beyond his concern for the integ- 
 rity of his hypothesis. But Mrs. Briss, under the guise 
 of friendly rivalry in behalf of her hypothesis, is fighting 
 with all her strength for the maintenance of her own 
 private security. 
 
 It is but a step to those irreconcilable antagonisms, 
 those relations of acute hostilily, which mark the intenser 
 moments of drama. Such are the relation of Maggie 
 and Charlotte in the later parts of "The Golden Bowl" 
 and that of Isabel Archer and Gilbert Osmond in the 
 later parts of "The Portrait of a Lady." In these cases 
 the elements of hatred, of horror, of intense fear, are 
 added to that of mere opposition of aim. And thus we 
 have drama in full panoply. Somewhat in a class with 
 these is the situation of Fleda Vetch. For the agony 
 of her struggle with temptation, as well as with her 
 cunning human adversaries, raises the pitch to a level 
 with that of the drama of Isabel Archer or of Maggie 
 Verver. 
 
 Yet all three of these dramas have much in common 
 with those less intense struggles that make the tissue of 
 "The Awkward Age" and "The Sacred Fount." In both 
 kinds the characters are fighting more or less in the dark. 
 In every case they are doing their best to keep their own 
 masks in place. Always in the heat of the struggle they 
 must scrupulously maintain their tenue. One of the 
 marks of the dialogue in all these relations is the anxiety 
 of each party to get and keep a moral advantage over 
 his adversary. They are all perpetually "sparring for 
 position," as they might say. They can never therefore 
 
Drama 89 
 
 "give themselves away." They can never play, like Maria 
 Gostrey and Lambert Strether, cards on the table. They 
 must, on the contrary, keep their hands well hidden from 
 one another; and they must never play a trump card 
 when their purpose can be as well served by one of lower 
 rank. 
 
 Naturally, therefore, the talk takes on a somewhat 
 different cast from that between simple "confederates." 
 It cannot show the same simplicity and completeness, the 
 same beautiful continuity as of logical demonstration, 
 which we observed in that of Strether and Maria, or in 
 that of the Prince and Charlotte working out their posi- 
 tion in reference to Maggie and her father. There is a 
 greater mystery in this allusive talk playing above im- 
 sounded deeps. Often it requires, on the author's part, 
 considerable explanation of what is going on in the minds 
 of the parties to the conversation. And the dialogue 
 proper appears greatly reduced in proportion to "psy- 
 chological" narrative. In "The Golden Bowl," for 
 example, in the great crucial scene between Maggie and 
 Charlotte, the dialogue is to the narrative but as one to 
 four or five, — so much need there was to set forth the 
 nature of Maggie's "system" and the means other than 
 words by which she managed to maintain her "advan- 
 tage" of position over Charlotte — let alone the accom- 
 paniment of feeling which makes that scene so deep and 
 moving. Where in such dialogue the method does not 
 admit of so much editorial explanation, where the drama 
 is all talk, the tendency is to put more of a strain on the 
 attention of the reader. This, I think, is notably the case 
 in "The Awkward Age," which seems to me the most 
 "difficult" and the least satisfying of all James's more 
 considerable works. In this book, the antagonisms are 
 constantly present, but in so disguised a form as to keep 
 
po The Method of Henry James 
 
 the reader's brows knit more tightly than those of the 
 characters themselves. 
 
 On the whole, however, whether the opposition is 
 partial or complete, one is more impressed with the like- 
 ness than the unlikeness of the more dramatic scenes to 
 those between mere confederates. The antagonists too 
 are working out together, though in opposition, the situa- 
 tion in which they find themselves. One of them at least 
 is trying to find out something, and that something is not 
 so much an objective fact as a state of mind that consti- 
 tutes a situation. Such, in "The Awkward Age," is the 
 state of mind of Mr. Longdon, — not to mention that of 
 Van, or that of Nanda. In "The Golden Bowl" it is the 
 state of mind, or the "system," of Maggie. Poor Char- 
 lotte Stant, kept equally in the dark by her lover, her 
 lover's wife, and her husband, the father-in-law of her 
 lover, must relieve herself of the dreadful suspense as to 
 where she stands by putting a question to her rival. 
 When Maggie has assured her that she accuses her of 
 nothing, and has submitted to that sisterly kiss upon the 
 cheek, when the others concerned have arrived in time 
 to witness that dramatic salutation, then Charlotte knows, 
 and they all know, that a new pattern has arranged itself 
 in their relations. In "The Portrait of a Lady," in all 
 those scenes in which Pansy's marriage is in question, 
 beneath all the struggle of Isabel and Osmond, there is 
 for Isabel the great business of making out the character 
 of her husband; and for us there is, through her con- 
 sciousness, the gradual spectacle of the revelation of his 
 baseness. The culmination of the struggle in "The 
 Spoils of Poynton" comes with the full realization by 
 Mrs. Gereth of the fundamental difference between her 
 ethical scale and that of the two lovers. It is again 
 a matter of question and answer, of following a trail. 
 
Drama 91 
 
 Fleda has at last given in to Mrs. Gereth's importunity 
 and agreed to "go to the Registrar" at once. But she 
 has to acknowledge not knowing where Owen is. 
 
 "Find him, find him, [says Mrs. Gereth] come straight 
 out with me to try at least and get at him." 
 
 "How can I get at him ? He'll come when he's ready," 
 our young woman quavered. 
 
 Mrs. C^reth turned on her sharply. "Ready for what? 
 Ready to see me ruined without a reason or a reward?" 
 • Fleda could at first say nothing; the worst of it all 
 was the something still unspoken between them. [I have 
 italicized these significant words.] Neither of them 
 dared utter it, but the influence of it was in the girl's 
 tone when she returned at last with great gentleness: 
 "Don't be cruel to me — I'm very tmhappy." The words 
 produced a visible impression on Mrs. Gereth, who held 
 . her face averted and sent off through the window a gaze 
 that kept pace with the long caravan of her treasures. 
 Fleda knew she was watching it wind up the avenue of 
 Poynton — Fleda participated indeed fully in the vision; 
 so that after a little the most consoling thing seemed to 
 her to add : "I don't see why in the world you take it so 
 for granted that he's, as you say, 'lost.' " 
 
 Mrs. Gereth continued to stare out of the window, and 
 her stillness denoted some success in controlling herself. 
 "If he's not lost why are you unhappy?" 
 
 "I'm unhappy because I torment you and you don't 
 understand me." 
 
 "No, Fleda, I don't understand you," said Mrs. Gereth, 
 finally facing her again. "I don't understand you at all, 
 and it's as if you and Owen were of quite another race 
 and another flesh. You make me feel very old-fashioned 
 and simple and bad."^ 
 
 This is the climax at once of the drama and of the 
 "revelation." For in so far as James makes use of drama, 
 it is in the interest of the idea. The idea having often 
 
 ^Vol. X, pp. 221-222. Again the italics are mine. 
 
92 The Method of Henry James 
 
 to do with a strong contrast of character and point of 
 view, drama is a natural by-product when the opposed 
 views come into action. Or, putting it the other way 
 round, the dramatic opposition is a means of bringing 
 to light the contrast which is the main subject of the 
 book. So it is in the scene from which quotation has 
 been made. And being as they are a means to the de- 
 velopment of an idea, it is to be expected that the 
 dramatic scenes should partake somewhat of the nature 
 of exposition. 
 
 This method is not, as we have seen, the ordinary 
 method of telling a story. But it is not unlike the method 
 of drama as practiced by some of the greatest modem 
 playwrights, for whom the play is not incapable of de- 
 veloping an idea. It is not the drama of eloquence, the 
 drama of "manners," the drama of "action." It is still less 
 perhaps the drama of dialogue, — of the witty interchange 
 of paradox and repartee. But eloquence, wit, manners, 
 even "action," while all welcome as accessories, are none 
 of them indispensables of drama. Indispensable alone 
 is the personal struggle, brought within the compass of 
 the "scene," and taken at a point acute enough to be 
 capable of holding the stage.^ Such a struggle, so limited 
 and focussed, is the subject of "The Spoils of Poynton." 
 And in its close weave, its quiet, steady, logical develop- 
 ment of a human situation, it recalls the drama of "Ros- 
 
 * Of course, when I speak of drama in a novel, I do not mean 
 to imply that the situation as there given is actually presentable 
 on the stage. However similar to a play in logic and design, 
 the novel has a technique of its own. Each form has its own 
 exactions and its own exemptions. The great exemption of the 
 novel is from making the speech of the characters self-explana- 
 tory and self-sufficient as a spectacle. And its main exaction is 
 the correlative of this : the author of the novel must furnish his 
 dialogue with full complement of setting and explanation. 
 
Drama pj 
 
 mersholm" and "Hedda Gabler," the drama of "Le Demi- 
 Monde" the drama of "Der Einsame Weg" and "Leben- 
 dige Stunden." And we realize that it is not for nothing 
 that Mr. James uses the language of the "scene" almost 
 as much as that of the atelier in giving an account of the 
 art of fiction. James is, of course, not by any means 
 alone in being subject to the influence of the stage. Any- 
 one familiar with the novels of, say, Mr. Galsworthy, 
 not to go outside of our own language, will realize how 
 profoundly the art of fiction has been affected by the art 
 of drama since the time when the latter began to take 
 itself with a seriousness worthy of its great traditions. 
 
 While his way of conceiving a scene has always, in 
 the later years, something of the dramatic, the novels are 
 comparatively few in either period in which James, rising 
 to the pitch of drama reached in "The Spoils of Poyil- 
 ton," at the same time makes the drama serve so well 
 the purposes of revelation. "The Tragic Muse" has only 
 too abundantly the stuff of drama. The drama of Nick 
 Dormer grows cold while that of Peter Sherringham is 
 being warmed up. As for the nature of the material 
 itself, it is obvious and abundant, but it lies too much on 
 the surface for the kind of development that is the 
 author's specialty. There is nothing here for interpreta- 
 tion. There is much for illustration — ^there are plenty 
 of items. But they are all items for substantiating a 
 simple proposition, — the incompatibility of the artistic 
 and the practical temperaments. Nick Dormer must be 
 given time to learn the strength of his inclination to the 
 life of the artist. But there is nothing to be worked out, 
 either in character or situation. There is no "System" | 
 to be tried, like the system of Maggie Verver or that of/ 
 Gilbert Osmond's wife. There is no strategy called for. 
 
94 The Method of Henry James 
 
 And strategy is of the very essence of the drama in the 
 best of Henry James. 
 
 The same objection holds in much greater degree for 
 the excellent story of "Washington Square"; for "The 
 Outcry," which of all novels of James approaches most 
 nearly the technique of the play;' and for the exciting 
 narrative of "The Other House." The last named, while 
 it gives ample scope for the strategy of the unscrupulous 
 "lead" (Rose Armiger), enlists this force in no better 
 a cause than the defamation of a rival and the conceal- 
 ment of murder. And this is so far from being charac- 
 teristic material for Henry James that we are for once 
 inclined to dismiss the work with the vague speculation 
 as to whether this master was capable, and at this point 
 in his career, of resorting to the "potboiler." 
 
 In other novels, while the material is amply susceptible 
 of development and potentially dramatic, the inherent 
 drama largely fails, for one reason or another, to get 
 itself realized. This is the case with both "Roderick 
 Hudson" and "The Wings of the Dove." We never 
 really get inside the skin of Roderick, where the conflict 
 may be supposed to rage, such is the limitation imposed 
 by the choice of Rowland Mallet for interpreter. The 
 struggle of Kate Croy and Milly Theale for the heart 
 of Merton — for that is what it comes to in spite of 
 the beautiful unselfishness of Milly — would be the best 
 material for drama, were it not for the fact that the 
 influence of Milly must work so much from a distance, 
 as it were. The "scene" can never dispense with the 
 personal presence of whatever forces are engaged. As 
 for "The Ambassadors," the struggle there takes place 
 too exclusively within the mind of Strether. 
 
 8 See the fifth chapter of Part II. 
 
Drama 95 
 
 We are thus brought back, for the really triiunphant 
 assertion of the dramatic sense, to "The Portrait of a 
 Lady" in the early period, and, in the later one, "The 
 Golden Bowl" and "The Spoils of Poynton." Each of 
 these stories develops an idea involving contrasts in 
 character and point of view. In each one the interest 
 is centered upon the struggle of a single person — a_ 
 woman — of a fineness and dignity and of an attractive 
 humanity such as to enlist our full sympathy. Each 
 woman is confronted with a problem bristling with diffi- 
 culties. She is opposed by forces only less strong and 
 subtle than herself. She is shown taking a line, devising 
 a "system," which she carries out from point to point, 
 while we follow without interruption and with ever 
 growing intensity of concern. 
 
 And if one were to choose among all these for the 
 drama par excellence, there would be little doubt of the 
 pre-eminence of "Poynton." In stories so wide in scope 
 as "The Portrait" and "The Golden Bowl," there must be 
 much besides drama. There must be a dense marshalling 
 of cohorts, a large unfolding of the human landscape. 
 The drama is seen growing and putting forth leaves before 
 the actual blossom unfolds. In plainer words, the dra- 
 matic scenes are but the culmination of the whole succes- 
 sion of scenes. This is implied in the very nature of the 
 novel. But "Poynton" is largely exempt from the usual 
 conditions of the novel by virtue of the more limited 
 subject-matter, by the lucky conception of a conflict which 
 can be shown always at its height. Perhaps we should 
 simply say that "Poynton" is a nouvelle rather than a 
 novel, and has the concentration proper to the briefer 
 form. The drama takes but two of the twenty-two sec- 
 tions to get in motion. From the moment that Fleda 
 Vetch determines to "cover" Owen, never to "give him 
 
p<J The Method of Henry James 
 
 away," from the moment that Mrs. Gereth so embarrasses 
 Fleda by commending her to Owen for an ideal daughter- 
 in-law, the forces have come to grips. The great scenes 
 begin with the seventh section, on Owen's visit to Ricks, 
 when Fleda must resort to such cunning diplomacy in 
 drawing him out on the subject of Mona's ultimatiun, and 
 not betraying herself upon his contrast between her refine- 
 ment and the vulgarity of Mona. There follows the still 
 more difficult trial when she must pretend ignorance of 
 Mona's attitude in the face of Mrs. Gereth's subtle inqui- 
 sition. In the ensuing scenes, the ground is continually 
 shifting. Fleda is driven back from one line of defense to 
 another. She is obliged to invent a new ingenious strategy 
 to suit each new position she takes. The tide of feeling 
 rises higher and higher as she finds it harder and harder to 
 satisfy her conscience within and to ward ofif the attacks 
 of her foes without. We arrive at scenes of overt drama 
 — such as would suit the visible stage itself — ^the shock- 
 ing of Mrs. Brigstock, the breakdown in the arms of 
 Owen, the final yielding to the importunities of Mrs. 
 Gereth and the desire of her own heart. Here we have 
 reached the climax; and the few remaining scenes are 
 the quiet but highly emotional epilogue, with the last 
 brief flaring up of grief at the burning of Poynton. 
 There is much to be said for the large, slowly moving 
 drama of "The Golden Bowl," with all its deliberate 
 sumptuousness and amplitude. But for swift, unhalting 
 onward movement, there is nothing in James — there is 
 perhaps nothing anywhere — like "The Spoils of Poyn- 
 ton." And this may be taken as the type and classic 
 instance of the "scenic" method in fiction. 
 
 Now it need not be inferred that dramatic effectiveness 
 is the sole measure of success in the novels of James. 
 Indeed we may go so far as to say that drama has never 
 
Drama gj 
 
 been one of the indispensables of fiction. Fielding is 
 great without it, and it is by no means one of the most 
 important elements in the greatness of Scott or Dickens. 
 It must have been observed that among the novels of 
 James largely wanting in drama are several of his best — 
 notably, in the early period, "The Princess Casamassima" 
 and "The Tragic Muse" ; in the later period, "The Am- 
 bassadors" and "The Wings of the Dove." There can 
 be little question of the superiority of "The Dove" to 
 "The Other House," or of "The Ambassadors" to "The 
 Outcry," in spite of the more dramatic character of the 
 latter in each case. There are evidently other sources 
 of interest still more important — at least when taken 
 together — in determining the sum of interest of the work. 
 All we can say is that, here or elsewhere, drama is one 
 very great source of interest in the novel, and that, other 
 things being equal, we shall prefer the novel that draws 
 largely upon it. This is no doubt one of the chief reasons 
 for the pre-eminence, in the early period, of "The Por- 
 trait of a Lady," and, in the later period, of "The Golden 
 Bowl" and "The Spoils of Poynton." 
 
VIII 
 
 ELIMINATIONS 
 
 The "scenic" method of narrative and the limitation of 
 point of view carry with them certain corollaries in tech- 
 nique. They involve certain ideals important otherwise in 
 determining the art of James. They involve — ^to put it in 
 a word — intensive rather than extensive working of the 
 subject. There are included in this "word" two proposi- 
 tions, one positive, the other negative. The subject is 
 to be worked intensively; it is not to be worked exten- 
 sively. To the first proposition too much time has per- 
 haps been given already. It is in virtue of the second 
 that James is most in contrast to the greater number of 
 his English predecessors. For the novel, and especially 
 the English novel, has seldom felt very strongly the 
 obligation of art to selection and elimination. It seems 
 from the beginning to have been exempt from the stan- 
 dards of severity in form. Being in origin a kind of 
 literary mongrel, it might well pay no regard to prescrip- 
 tions against the melange des genres. Having for its 
 function the mere entertainment of idle moments, having 
 for jury the miscellaneous vulgar herd of readers, the 
 only requirement was that it should entertain; all the 
 resources of the author were drawn upon for diversity 
 and abundance of entertainment, and little care was given 
 to fitness, to the bienseances, to vraisemblance, to sobriety 
 and consistency of effect. And this tradition has not 
 failed to make itself felt in our day. Witness the popu- 
 larity — to mention only serious work — of the novels of 
 
Eliminations pp 
 
 Mr. H. G. Wells, of Mr. Gilbert Cannan, and of many 
 other less gifted improvisatori. 
 
 But even in the novel there has been another tradition. 
 There were signs of it in Fielding, and it was strong in 
 Jane Austen and George Eliot. In our own time we have 
 Mr. Galsworthy, Mrs. Wharton and several other devo- 
 tees of the more sober faith. It would be neither politic 
 nor critical to attempt to rule out either of these types of 
 novel. We do not wish to cut ourselves off from any 
 rich source of entertainment (and instruction) such as 
 Mr. Wells has shown himself. And any such move could 
 easily be countered with sarcasms upon the stricter form. 
 It is easy to contrast the poverty and stuffiness of these ^ 
 selective writers with the large generosity and breeziness, 
 the manifold suggestiveness and stimulation, of the rapid 
 fire novelists. And indeed, so little authority have classic 
 standards in our day, it is the more careful and limited 
 novelist who is nowadays most likely to be put on the 
 defensive. It is this type of novelist, in the person of its 
 most notable exemplar in English, that is at this day most 
 in need of explanation. 
 
 The appeal of James is not then the appeal of diversity.^ 
 He makes no concession to the popular desire for a con- 
 stant change of scene, for wonders and surprises, fbr 
 sensations and facile amusement. You will find no air- 
 ships or caravans to give you picturesque transit into 
 the clouds or into gypsy-land. Neither politics nor litera-\ 
 ture, neither religion, morality nor social questions make 
 the subject of his discourse. Indeed he is not inclined 
 to discourse, nor his people either. His people seem to 
 have no theories. Taken up with their own particular 
 human problems, they show little interest in problems in 
 general. Henry James may be the most psychological 
 of novelists. He shows no inclination — at least in his 
 
100 The Method of Henry James 
 
 maturer work — ^to generalize his psychology. It is not 
 he who analyzes for us the motives of his characters. It 
 is they themselves who carry on any such investigation. 
 (That is indeed one reason why the stories seem so 
 "difficult" to the general reader, who is accustomed to 
 having his psychology straight from the author.) And 
 if our author does not psychologize, neither does he phi- 
 losophize, neither does he sentimentalize. You will find 
 no solid blocks of reflection upon "life" and human nature 
 scattered, Thackeray-wise, along the course of the narra- 
 tive. You will find few producible nuggets of wisdom 
 such as catch the light from every ledge and cranny of 
 Meredith's work. 
 
 The appeal of James is not by diversity, but by fineness 
 of texture, closeness and subtility of weave, fastidious- 
 ness of workmanship. He is deeply concerned to produce 
 a surface at once rich and exquisite. For effects of this 
 order the most careful selection is required. The most 
 jealous watchfulness must be exercised against the intru- 
 sion of materials out of 'keeping with the design. There 
 is accordingly no place for the excursions and anecdotes, 
 the surprises and whimsies of the ordinary novelist. 
 
 The first concerh- of all is for the integrity and con- 
 sistency of the scene, of what Mr. James calls the "dis- 
 criminated occasion," ^— the "secret" of which, ^as he 
 points out, is "an adapted, a related point of view^,." .The 
 reduction of the narrative to a series of "discriminated 
 occasions" and the strict adherence in each case to the 
 occasion so discriminated explain the strenuous' elimina- 
 tion of the usual means of entertainment. Mr. James 
 has a horror of the "loose end," which, he says, has 
 found a perfect paradise in the English novel. ^ In "The 
 Awkward Age," he tells us, it was his aim to compose 
 
 1 Vol. XIX, p. xvi. 
 
Eliminations loi 
 
 a series of scenes as objective as those of a play. In 
 carrying out this aim he "participated in the technical 
 amusement" of the playwright, finding the playwright's 
 gratification in the neatly executed piece of work. "The 
 play," he says, "consents to the logic of but one way, 
 mathematically right, and with the loose end as gross 
 an impertinence on its surface, and as grave a dishonour, 
 as the dangle of a snippet of silk or wool on the right 
 side of a tapestry. We are shut up wholly to cross-rela- 
 tions, relations all within the action itself; no part of 
 which is related to anything but some other part — save of 
 course by the relation of the total to life." ^ 
 
 Mr. James, in this same place, has a remarkable state- 
 ment of the disabilities of the play in comparison with 
 the novel, which latter may carry so much greater weight 
 and richness of material. And he will never himself 
 quite forego the advantage of the novelist. Even "The 
 Awkward Age" is a novel and not a play. But he never, 
 in his later period, loses sight of that ideal of the play. 
 And he does forever seek to reduce all his material to 
 the compass of the discriminated occasion. 
 
 James does not like to interrupt his story to go back- 
 to events beyond its proper limits in order to "catch up." 
 That would be to let our present food grow cold. It is 
 necessary, in "The Ambassadors," to let us know some- 
 thing of the history of Chad in Paris, as well as the fact 
 that Strether was once himself in early years an eager 
 pilgrim at Parisian shrines. But it is never Henry James 
 who lets us know of these circumstances ; nor are they 
 presented to us in a general way. They come to us 
 through the. reflections of Strether upon a particular 
 day, reflections naturally engendered and nourished by 
 what he saw in a walk through familiar streets of Paris. 
 
 "Vol. IX, p. XX. 
 
102 The Method of Henry James 
 
 In this way "two birds are killed with one stone." We 
 get our facts, and we get them colored and flavored with 
 the feeling of the character. And besides all this, we 
 never lose for a moment our intimate sense of the present 
 experience. A still better means of rendering the facts, 
 because more dramatic, more animated, is exemplified 
 by the conversation with Maria Gostrey in which we are 
 equipped, almost without suspecting it, with all the neces- 
 sary data in regard to WooUett and the embassy. Inci- 
 dentally Strether — and so the reader — has suggested to 
 him reservations and interpretations that tend to modify 
 the facts and make them still more a part of the present 
 experience. They are not merely the subject of present 
 discussion; they become the problem of the moment. 
 And they serve to develop the characters at the same time 
 that they advance the story. It is by such means that 
 James avoids the boresome "seated mass of explanation 
 after the fact," the "block of merely referential narra- 
 tive," of which he speaks with so much dislike.* It is 
 thus with his characteristic love of economy in the interest 
 of luxury that he brings in so many other beauties of art 
 in the very train of utility. 
 
 Similar considerations guide him in regard to the actual 
 narrative, — ^the story of present events itself. The great 
 thing is to make the account particular and not general, — 
 to be forever dealing with some special occasion. Very 
 seldom does the author take one of those bird's-eye views 
 of a long period or a series of events so often resorted 
 to by novelists for the sake of getting along with their 
 story. Very seldom does he simimarize or classify the 
 experiences of his characters as Mr. Hugh Walpole, for 
 example, in "Fortitude," summarizes the experiences of 
 Peter Westcott at Dawson's school, or as Thackeray 
 
 8 Vol. XXI, p. xix. 
 
Eliminations io$ 
 
 summarizes in "The Virginians" or even in "Vanity- 
 Fair." James does not like to let his character so far 
 escape him, — ^to lose touch for so long with his immediate 
 consciousness in particular circumstances. Summaries 
 and classifications must come unmistakably through the 
 consciousness of the character himself, or of someone 
 else in the story who ought to know. Of course, in the 
 later work, the problem is somewhat simplified for James 
 by the comparatively brief time, the comparatively small 
 number of events, covered in the story. In earlier novels, 
 like "Roderick Hudson" and "The Portrait of a Lady," 
 it must be acknowledged, many violations will be found 
 of a rule not yet formulated for himself by the author. 
 
 The same rule requires the elimination of all descrip- 
 tion of persons, of scenery and of other "setting," except 
 as they may be reflected naturally in the consciousness of 
 the characters on a particular occasion. And this prac- 
 tically means the elimination of all blocks of description, 
 of all but the briefest of suggestive phrases, or of details 
 thoroughly assimilated and enlisted in the interest of 
 some special bias of interpretation. Not often in his 
 maturer work does James vouchsafe on his own authority 
 a generalized account of the personal appearance of his 
 characters. Nor does he often give the items, whether 
 of the appearance in general or of the appearance on a 
 particular occasion. What he strives to render is the 
 main impression of the personality, with often the subtle 
 change from day to day, the waxing and waning of 
 beauty, the present condition of the soul as it shows 
 through the earthy mask. The form and features, the 
 dress and attitude are transparencies through which 
 shines the light of thought and feeling. 
 
 Thus one might, in feeble imitation of his method, 
 describe the author himself as he appeared to the French 
 
104 ^^^ Method of Henry James 
 
 and to the American portrait painter, in each case so 
 much more significant and beautiful than the man pre- 
 sented in the crude items of the photograph.* We are 
 not told by Sargent and Blanche of the large extent of 
 bald head, the heavy features and bulky figure of the 
 anglicized American, the almost ferocious severity of 
 his glance, the stiff formality of the coat and collar of 
 a certain year. These were all doubtless facts of a certain 
 kind, but negative, almost irrelevant facts, — facts interest- 
 ing chiefly as illustrating the recalcitrant nature of the 
 stuff of which human beings are vsrrought. The Henry 
 James of Blanche is a thinker, seen in profile with the 
 mild gravity of finely moulded features and far-seeing 
 glance. It is a moment of thoughtful concentration. He 
 is reflecting, it may be, upon that Future Life which he 
 thought guaranteed to human desire by the boundless 
 resourcefulness of the human spirit. And behind him 
 in a rich and delicate pattern of leaves, we feel how, to 
 his artist-imagination, experience flowers endlessly with 
 the sense of our cosmic relations, the perception of which 
 is the very process of conscious life." The James seen 
 by Sargent is the creator of human beings and the 
 presenter of their dramas. He is shown here in the 
 plenitude of creative power. Straight forward he looks 
 from the place where he sits established in all the solid 
 amplitude of entire possession. There is something 
 almost portentous in his glance. It is so penetrating as 
 
 * There are indeed several most artistic photographs of James, 
 notably those by Hoppe (reproduced in "The Craftsman," 2S: 31) 
 and Coburn (see "The Bookman," 38:122 and "The Century," 
 87:150). 
 
 " Certain views of Henry James in regard to life after death 
 were published in 1910 in "Harper's Bazaar," 44 : 26. They 
 appear in condensed form in "Current Literature," 48 : 303-4. 
 
Eliminations 105 
 
 to cause uneasiness were it not for the large indulgence, 
 the gentleness of the philosopher, shed, as it were, from 
 his shining brows. His eyes are darkened with thought, 
 but his large features glow with the joy of successful 
 labor, of understanding satisfied. 
 
 If I have read more into these portraits than is there 
 in presented items, or if the painters have read more 
 into the face of the author than they actually saw, we 
 can hardly have gone further than the characters of 
 James in their interpretation of one another's appearance. 
 Thus Milly Theale learns from the mere look of Kate 
 Croy, a person not given to easy betrayals, the substan- 
 tial fact that Merton Densher has returned from 
 America. "Kate had remained in the window, very 
 handsome and upright, the outer dark framing in a highly 
 favourable way her summery simplicities and lightnesses 
 of dress. . . . She hovered there as with conscious eyes 
 and some added advantage. Then indeed, with small 
 delay, her friend sufficiently saw. The conscious eyes, 
 the added advantage were but those she had now always 
 at command, — ^those proper to the person Milly knew as 
 known to Merton Densher. It was for several seconds 
 again as if the total of her identity had been that of the 
 person known to him — a determination having for result 
 another sharpness of its own. Kate had positively but 
 to be there just as she was to tell her he had come back. 
 It seemed to pass between them in fine without a word 
 that he was in London, that he was perhaps only round 
 the corner. . . ."* Once more we come back to the 
 "economy" of a writer whose description is so indis- 
 tinguishable from the narrative itself. Of course this 
 method requires an especially careful selection of the 
 few items of appearance noted, since each bears so heavy 
 
 "Vol. XIX, pp. 272-273. 
 
io6 The Method of Henry James 
 
 a burden of interpretation. James's later work in this 
 respect compares witlj his earlier as the descriptions of 
 Sterne compare with those of Smollett. We have much 
 more data for the appearance of Commodore Trunnion 
 than for that of Uncle Toby, but we feel much better 
 acquainted with Uncle Toby, the details given in his case 
 are so carefully chosen for what intimate things they tell 
 us about him. In the later work of James we feel better 
 acquainted with the characters than in his early work 
 since everything that is told us about them is so imme- 
 diately relevant. Facts are given us only so fast as we 
 can digest them. But they are given us so unobtrusively 
 that we are partly or wholly unaware of the means by 
 which they are conveyed. This change in method might 
 be likened to the change which Strether observed in 
 Chad Newsome. "He had formerly with a great deal 
 of action expressed very little; and he now expressed 
 whatever was necessary with almost none at all." It is 
 not that in his earlier characterizations James expresses 
 very little; but that, in his later ones, with so few items, 
 he manages to express so much more. 
 
 The same evolution is observable in his treatment of the 
 ^setting. In the beginning he was precise and extensive in 
 his notation of the details of setting. Dealing largely 
 with European scenes, he shows the boundless hunger 
 of the tourist for the picturesque and the pride of a 
 youthful tourist in displaying his expert knowledge of 
 the old world. Names of places are scattered through 
 the story with lavish profusion. Public monuments and 
 private dwellings come in alike for enthusiastic descrip- 
 tion. In the later stories there is no less rich a sense of 
 "Europe," but it is conveyed in a manner much less 
 ostentatious. Every detail admitted has now its direct 
 bearing on the particular narrative and its intimate revela- 
 
Eliminations loj 
 
 tion of the characters involved. "Europe" is now a 
 society; a world peopled with individuals living their 
 natural and unpublished lives. Hotels and churches have 
 yielded almost entirely to private homes as the scene of 
 the story; and differences in atmosphere are now 
 rendered much more delicately at a much smaller outlay 
 of itemized description. The Parisian home of Madame 
 de Vionnet is by no possibility to be confused in the 
 reader's mind with that of Maria Gostrey or that of 
 Chad Newsome. And yet there is very little offered in 
 any of these cases for identification by the police. An 
 instance of what James can do for a domestic interior 
 without actually describing it is the account of Merton 
 Densher's impressions of Aunt Maud's London resi- 
 dence : 
 
 Lancashire Gate looked rich — ^that was all the effect. 
 ... He hadn't known — and in spite of Kate's repeated 
 reference to her own rebellions of taste — that he should 
 "mind" so much how an independent lady might decorate 
 her house. . . . Never, he felt sure, had he seen so many 
 things so unanimously ugly — operatively, ominously so 
 cruel. . . . He couldn't describe and dismiss them col- 
 lectively, call them either Mid- Victorian or Early — ^not 
 being certain they were rangeable under one rubric. It 
 was only manifest they were splendid and were further- 
 more conclusively British. They constituted an order 
 and abounded in rare material — ^precious woods, metals, 
 stuffs, stones. He had never dreamed of anything so 
 fringed and scalloped, so buttoned and corded, drawn 
 everywhere so tight and curled everywhere so thick. He 
 had never dreamed of so much gilt and glass, so much 
 satin and plush, so much rosewood and marble and 
 malachite. But it was above all the solid forms, the 
 wasted finish, the misguided cost, the general attestation 
 of morality and money, a good conscience and a big 
 balance. These things finally represented for him a por- 
 
io8 The Method of Henry James 
 
 tentous negation of his own world of thought — of which, 
 for that matter, in presence of them, he became as for 
 the first time hopelessly aware. They revealed it to him 
 by their merciless difference.'^ 
 
 Many sentences are omitted from this account in my 
 citation, but none that add anything material to our 
 knowledge of Aunt Maud's house. They all have refer- 
 ence to Densher's reactions in presence of this sumptuous 
 ugliness. And that is the "note" of all the later work: 
 the setting is given us through the reactions of the people 
 in it, and carries all the color of their personality. In 
 the case of Ricks in "The Spoils of Poynton" we are 
 given several more precise details, as is fitting to a story 
 having for its material subject the furnishings of a house. 
 We learn of the "single plate of the window," — ^the "one 
 flat glass sliding up and down," with certain items of 
 the wall paper and the doors. But this is merely the 
 slender base from which Fleda conducts her higher 
 operations of fancy, on the subject of the maiden-aunt 
 who had informed this dwelling. There is nothing in 
 which the difference between Fleda and Mrs. Gereth is 
 brought out more delicately and yet more surely than in 
 Mrs. Gereth's inability to feel the beauty of this maiden- 
 aunt of Fleda's sympathetic reconstruction. It was here 
 that, as much as anywhere, Fleda "took the highest line 
 and the upper hand."* And thus we see again how 
 ■description is made contributive to characterization, — 
 nay, to the idea of the book. 
 
 / As for natural scenery, there is practically none in 
 ' the stories of James. That is significant enough. How- 
 ever much he may have loved mountains or the sea, the 
 
 T Vol. XIX, pp. 77-79. 
 « Vol. X, p. 248. 
 
Eliminations lop 
 
 undomesticated aspects of nature — and as to this I can- 
 not say — ^there was surely no place for these wild beauties 
 among the clipped yews and formal terraces of his gar- 
 den. No one, in reading Henry James, will have to 
 skip the descriptions of nature. They were, of all 
 luxuries in fiction, the first indicated for elimination. 
 
 Of course we must not give the impression that all the 
 limitations of James were deliberately assumed for the 
 sake of his art. Some of them are no doubt simply the 
 limitations of his outlook. Such is notably the lack in 
 all his work of what is sometimes called a larger social 
 consciousness. By this is meant a realization of society 
 as a whole made up of more or less disparate groups, 
 with some understanding of the industrial and economic 
 conditions that determine the life of each group and their 
 relations to one another, and some active concern for the 
 solution of our social problems. I suppose it is axiomatic 
 that such a social consciousness is, if not the discovery 
 of our time, at least one of the most striking marks of 
 recent literature. And it does set a writer somewhat 
 apart to be lacking in social consciousness in a period 
 that has produced "Die Weber," "Les Bienfaiteurs,"^ 
 "Widowers' Houses" and "Strife"; "The New Machia- 
 velli," "Fraternity," "The Man of Property" and "The: 
 Harbor." 
 
 Many will be found to declare that no literature — 
 perhaps no art of any kind — can be truly great in our 
 day that is lacking in this essential element. It is a. 
 point upon which I cannot pronounce with authority. 
 I certainly feel the lack in James. But there is one thing 
 of which I am confident. Good art cannot be made out 
 of materials of which one is not a master. Much harm 
 comes to art from the attempt to handle material that 
 is not one's own simply because it is supposed to be 
 
no The Method of Henry James 
 
 "the thing." This very social consciousness, when arti- 
 ficially taken on, or applied to life in a doctrinaire fashion, 
 or unaccompanied by competent knowledge, has been the 
 spoiling of much good art, in poetry, in the drama and 
 the novel. 
 
 It happens that Henry James grew up in a world of 
 thought to which these ideas seem to have been alien. 
 His father was a man of independent means, not engaged 
 in business, whose occupation was the pursuit of culture 
 and the perfecting of a mystical philosophy. He was in 
 no hurry to have his sons make choice of an occupation ; 
 he was loath to have them come to a decision, lest any 
 given calling might limit the expansive life of the soul. 
 In their household circle, the economic arts of produc- 
 tion and distribution seemed as dull and sordid as the 
 arts of the kitchen. So far from having formed an idea 
 of "labor" and the laboring class, they do not appear to 
 have taken into their horizon even the business man and 
 the banker except as persons living on their incomes, and 
 generally in Europe. Henry James gravitated inevitably 
 towards the society of the leisured and well-to-do, and 
 among them, the clever and highly cultivated. These he 
 knew, with their complement of servants, bookbinders 
 and telegraphers,' and with the outer fringe of artists, 
 tourists, and the shabby genteel of European capitals.^" 
 It is idle to speculate on the greater social significance he 
 might have had with a wider social horizon. He gave 
 us a thorough and beautiful rendering of what he knew; 
 and that, I must believe, is the one thing required by art. 
 
 9 "In the Cage." 
 
 10 "The Pupil." 
 
IX 
 
 TONE 
 
 The same ideal which leads James to this simplification 
 of the elements of the story expresses itself in a related 
 character of his writings, — the consistency, or uniformity, ' 
 of tone. I say consistency, or uniformity ; but any one is 
 free to say monotony who finds that these eliminations 
 are in effect but limitations. 
 
 To a large extent the uniformity of tone reflects simply 
 the uniformity of subject-matter. You do not find here 
 the tone of low or violent passion, since you are not 
 dealing at all with people who employ such a tone. 
 There are no low humors, and accordingly no sugges- 
 tion of the manner of low comedy. The crude, the 
 pathetic, the sentimental, in character and situation, are 
 all ruled out, together with the atmospheres they carry 
 with them. 
 
 But the uniformity of tone is not simply a result of 
 homogeneity of the characters. With range of characters 
 as limited as you please, the author would still be free 
 to assume the tone of satire, of cynicism, of anxious 
 morality, of sentimental concern. But James never takes 
 advantage of this liberty. He is never sarcastic, never 
 lachrymose, never moralistic. There is never any suffu- 
 sion of his work with a cosmic poesy such as distinguishes 
 the work of Hardy. It is always unmistakably the tone 
 of prose in which he speaks. He has but a mild tincture 
 of that gusto — ^that blend of irony andx boyish high 
 spirits — ^that makes the family likeness of male English 
 novelists from Fielding and Scott to Dickens and Mere- 
 
112 The Method of Henry James 
 
 dith. The tone of James is the tone of indoors and the 
 tea-table. There is about him no smell of peat or sage- 
 brush. You cannot imagine him peddling Bibles in Spain 
 or "squatting" in California among the rattlesnakes. You 
 cannot imagine him taking an interest in the soul of a 
 planter up some river of Borneo. His words are never 
 scattered and disarranged by any breath of the boisterous 
 Atlantic. 
 
 Here again we are reminded of the importance of 
 French influences in his training. All that we have just 
 said of James may be said of Mr. George Moore. We 
 recall that Mr. Moore wanted to be a painter; wanted it 
 earnestly, it seems, and actually made a trial under Pari- 
 sian masters. But we need not refer this quality in either 
 case specifically to the influence of French painting. This 
 uniformity of tone— ;^is sasrifice of so . many of the 
 colorsTavoFed by English literary artists to an elegant 
 consiste'ncjrof ^effect— js_ a quality which has ever been 
 highly prized by French writers, lovers of good form 
 and refinement. And it is a quality which iii every 
 age has yielded in England to the love of variety, intensity 
 and vigor. Witness Chaucer and Shakespeare, witness 
 Thackeray and Browning. Witness even Congreve and 
 Pope, who, in a period nominally devoted to the bietir 
 seances, fell so far short of the simple good taste of 
 Moliere and Boileau. With the early periods, whether 
 in France or elsewhere, James would seem to have been 
 very little acquainted if we may judge from his allusions. 
 But with nineteenth-century French writers (including 
 the Gallicized Turgenieflf) he was on terms of inti- 
 macy; and it is among them that one finds the closest 
 resemblance to his ideal in tone. Indeed his elimination 
 of all the more markedly subjective colors in his writing 
 may be regarded as but a corollary of the French rule 
 
Tone 113 
 
 of obiegJjjgj;ggJ[jgjIlj In his case, however, as with the 
 mdhFrench tradition, I feel this to be more an expres- 
 sion of temperament than subjection to any doctrine^ 
 
 The simple fact is that James was extremely fastidious 
 If sometimes we find him violating good taste, as it mus ; 
 have seemed to him — as in "The American" by the oath ; 
 of his hero or by the mention of Swiss manure heaps , 
 we may be sure this was the concession to doctrine. Thi 
 was an attempt, by sacrifice of his own feelings, t( 
 propitiate the spirit of Balzac. Later on, I suppose, h 
 developed an interpretation of the gospel which recon-< 
 ciled realism with good taste, at least for him. No one 
 writer can treat the whole of ^ife. Each one must devoteV 
 himself to those aspects which he best understands. Such 
 was the opinion of Maupassant quoted with seeming 
 approval by Mr. James in his essay on the French writer.^ 
 And so the fastidious American was absolved from all 
 commerce with the ugly and the cheap, his forte being 
 the delineation of the fair and the fine. More and more, 
 with the fixing of his taste, he chooses subjects to which 
 the cheap and the ugly will not be relevant. More and 
 more he chooses situations involving people of high good- 
 breeding and fineness of instinct. If there are vulgar 
 people involved-^like Jim Pocock in "The Ambassadors," 
 like most of the characters in "What Maisie Knew" — 
 they come to us strained through the consciousness of 
 people not vulgar, and with all material offensiveness 
 eliminated in the process. Our concern is for the other 
 sort ; and as for the author himself, we know how largely 
 he sinks his own view in that of his Strethers and Fledas. 
 
 One thing particularly displeasing to such fastidious- 
 ness is any weight of emphasis incompatible with the, 
 nicest good taste. Neither joy nor sorrow, liking nor 
 
 1 In "Partial Portraits." 
 
114 The Method of Henry James 
 
 dislike, neither fear, desire nor anxiety must be given 
 strident utterance. For we are the most civil beings that 
 ever took tea together; and we owe it to one another's 
 feelings to keep our voices down to a sociable pitch. If 
 readers get the impression that the people of James are 
 without strong feeling, this is largely because of their 
 preternatural good breeding. A careful reading of such 
 a story as "The Spoils of Poynton" will reveal the pres- 
 ence throughout of a very strong undercurrent of emo- 
 tion. But except at one or two critical moments it keeps 
 well hidden beneath the surface. 
 
 There is another reason jorJhP. rnnina,ratlv£jffiant of 
 expression of feeling i n James. Hjs_chariacj:ers are most 
 LDf_the time engaged in a strenuous exercise of Jheir_wits. 
 However muc h their happiness_jm ay depend upon t he 
 I solution of the problem that far ^s them. ,.thpy jmiisf_first 
 isolve the problemj^and the engrgy concentrated^n this 
 jintellectuar process is so much energyjdi3;ertf.d-fj:^2the 
 cKanners of emotional expression. .It , js_ also J:rue that 
 jthesejpeople are generally actors, with_gggd reasons for 
 kiot betraying their feelings to one anoth er . 
 1 But I had rather dwell here upon the other considera- 
 tion. It is to a large degree the gentleman's ideal of 
 tenue that requires him to maintain a quiet evenness of 
 tone however strong his feelings may be. And the author 
 himself, in those passages where he shows his people off 
 their guard, feels the obligation of treating them — and 
 the reader — in the same tone of smooth good breeding. 
 In no respect have we a better gauge of the maturity of 
 the work than in this matter of emotional emphasis, 
 which shows a graduated decline from the first of the 
 novels to the date" at which we may regard the method 
 of James as fixed. In another connection I shall give 
 
 2 Say 1896, the date of "Poynton." 
 
Tone 115 
 
 instances of the heavier emphasis of "The American." ; 
 Here I will content myself with citing the words in which ' 
 are recorded Rowland Mallet's feelings when he learned 
 of the engagement of Mary Garland to Roderick Hudson. 
 It was on shipboard. "Rowland sat staring; though the 
 sea was calm it seemed to him that the ship gaive a great 
 dizzying lurch. But in a moment he continued to answer 
 coherently."* The early manner is here perhaps all the 
 more striking — at any rate it is all the more interesting — 
 because of the author's evident wish to indicate his 
 character's unusual self-control. His character was 
 indeed self -controlled ; but the author indulges for him 
 in hyperbole to which he would never in later years have 
 committed himself. When in "The Spoils of Poynton" 
 we have had a particularly fine display of courageous 
 acting on the part of Fleda, and the author wishes to let 
 us know that she is at the emotional breaking-point, this 
 is the quiet way he does it: "At last . . . she made 
 a dash for the stairs and ran up."* And it is not often 
 in this later period that James will record so animatedly 
 physical a manifestation of feeling as that, even of| 
 characters "off the stage" like Fleda. 
 
 This subdued tone is in keeping with the general atmos- 
 pheric stillness which results from the narrative method 
 of "revelation." A more excited manner would accord 
 with a story full of the bustle of action or the clamor 
 of passion. But here we are bidden to follow with a 
 quiet intentness the growth of an idea. We have no 
 vagrant energy to spare for the mere pomp and circum- 
 stance of life. What we have most need of, after good 
 taste on guard, is a jealous intellectual self-possession. 
 
 There is no denying that, for most readers, James 
 
 3 Vol. I, p. 82. 
 * Vol. X, p. 103. 
 
ii6 , The Method of Henry James 
 
 car/ies too far this sterilizing or deodorizing process. 
 Evfcn his fondest admirers have moments of irritation 
 wuh him for what must seem his excessive good breed- 
 ii^, his almost spinsterly fear of any note too loud, any 
 s<;ent too strong. However much we may love order and 
 regularity, the pruned and weeded garden, we cannot 
 but remember that some of our most pleasing impres- 
 sions of beauty have been received from straggling weeds 
 /that have escaped the gardener's hoe and come to flower 
 t in saucy disregard of authority. In English fiction, at 
 (any rate, some of the finest effects are those which have 
 (Come by accident. They are effects of inspiration rather 
 jthan of design. Genius has blundered upon them almost 
 unawares. Or at least they were possible only to the 
 krtist painting with a broad stroke, with a large free 
 motion of the arm. 
 
 Not only was the ideal of James a dififerent one. He 
 seems to have had, in general, little patience with these 
 triumphs of straying genius. Indeed he seems often to 
 have been incapable of recognizing them when he saw 
 them. It would scarcely do to describe Thomas Hardy 
 as a straying genius, however triumphant a one we may 
 grant him. But the attitude of James towards Hardy 
 will sufficiently illustrate his general insensibility to the 
 broader style. It may be that Mr. James was later con- 
 verted; but it must stand as symptomatic that a first 
 reading of "Far from the Madding Crowd" left him 
 cold.* While that novel "at a cursory glance, has a rather 
 promising air of life and warmth," he is obliged to state 
 that "it has a fatal lack of magic." It is indeed, he 
 acknowledges, a very clever book, and one having "a 
 certain aroma of the meadows and lanes — a natural 
 
 * So it appears from his unsigned review in "The Nation," 
 Dec. 24, 1874. 
 
Tone I iif 
 
 relish for harvestings and sheep-washings." Otherwise 
 it is scarcely genuine. His account of the plot is most 
 illuminating. He enumerates the principal characters, 
 the several men and the heroine, Bathsheba Everdene. 
 "They are all in love with her," he says, "and the young 
 lady is a flirt, and encourages them all. . . . We cannot 
 say that we either understand or like Bathsheba. She 
 is a lady of the inconsequential, wilful, mettlesome type 
 which has lately become so much the fashion for heroines, 
 and of which Mr. Charles Reade is in a manner the 
 inventor. . . . But Mr. Hardy's embodiment of it seems 
 to us to lack reality; he puts her through the Charles 
 Reade paces, but she remains alternately vague and 
 coarse, and seems always artificial. This is Mr. Hardy's 
 trouble; he rarely gets beyond ambitious artifice — the 
 mechanical simulation of heat and depth and wisdom that 
 are absent. . . . Everything human in the book strikes 
 us as factitious and insubstantial; the only things we 
 believe in are the sheep and the dogs." 
 
 Ah well! We need not hold him too responsible for 
 an opinion expressed in 1874 in the Tartarly manner of 
 the periodical which had assumed, in America, the auto- ■ 
 cratic mantle of the historical English reviews. Only, 
 we feel that he does betray here an insensibility that is 
 characteristic, the same insensibility that leads him to 
 question the greatness of Charles Dickens. There are 
 certain large ranges of life — ^and not so very remote 
 from common experience — ^in which he seems to be sim- 
 ply not at home. Otherwise he would not find it so easy 
 to dispose of Bathsheba Everdene with his label of flirt 
 and to dismiss everything human in this masterpiece as 
 factiti0us and insubstantial. I suppose the fastidious 
 taste of James could not put up with a certain awkward- 
 ness, a certain countrified homespun manner of Hardy's, 
 
ii8 The Method of Henry James 
 
 and that, finding heat and warmth and wisdom conveyed 
 in a manner so uncouth, he was forced in self-defense to 
 the assumption of their all being but a mechanical simu- 
 lation. Instead of being too clever. Hardy was simply 
 not clever enough, or not polite enough, to meet the 
 exacting standard of his critic. 
 
 But it was funny indeed for ^ardy, of all persons, 
 to suffer the imputation of "a*- 'fatal lack of magic." 
 Magic is, I suppose, the one thing in a book least sus- 
 ceptible of explanation, an effect not to be attained 
 through any process of design and arrangement. It is 
 the one quality which Hardy shows more often than any 
 other English novelist. And it is a quality which only 
 the most superstitious devotees of James would insist 
 on ascribing to their idol. (His charm is unmistakable, 
 and one must confess the at least etymological associa- 
 tion of magic and charm.) It is seldom that his steady 
 recitative breaks into the flowing curves of the aria, that 
 sheer beauty disengages itself from the dense pattern 
 of thought and experience. It is seldom that the reader 
 is caught and swept along, as so often by Hardy, in the 
 swift broad current of simple passion. That is not pos- 
 sible save at the sacrifice of his much-prized self-posses- 
 sion. 
 
 There are times in which the impatient reader is ready 
 to damn his self-possession! We have epithets for 
 describing the man whose manner is too perfect, who 
 will never join us in any lapse from the drawing-room 
 code. If we refrain from applying these epithets, it is 
 because in the main we prefer good taste to bad, the quiet 
 to the loud; and because we have so often found the 
 most robust qualities lying beneath the exquisite surface 
 of refinement. We may wish to remind our friend that 
 one need not show himself robustious in order to show 
 
Tone up 
 
 himself robust. We may be inclined to point out that 
 the tea-table is all the better for an occasional excursion 
 to the woods or even the tavern. But in the main we 
 are content to visit the woods with Cooper and the tavern 
 with Smollett, and to take our tea with James. We must 
 not let an occasional irritation blind us to the rare beauty 
 of tone which James was perhaps the first to demonstrate 
 as a possibility for English fiction. The consistency upon 
 which we have dwelt is a beauty implying many others. 
 There is always positive enduring charm about work in 
 which the materials are all so choice, in which the pieces 
 are fitted together with such patient and jealous care. 
 We cannot grow tired of these subdued harmonies of 
 color, of this rare impeccable finish and glaze. Hpwever 
 much we may admire the vivid canvases of the Salle 
 Rubens, we are sure to return often enough to the 
 cabinetwork, the tapestries and the porcelains of the 
 Musee Cluny. 
 
X 
 
 ROMANCE 
 
 The elaborate manipulation of suspense by James sug- 
 gested comparison with the romantic genre of the detec- 
 tive story. And in more ways than one the novels of 
 James make on me at least the impression of romances. 
 I have to confess at once to a considerable insensibility 
 to the charms of ordinary romance. But everyone has 
 some craving for romance; and this craving is largely 
 satisfied in my own case by the stories of James. And 
 here I do not refer to the obviously and technically 
 romantic manner of such a tale as "A Passionate Pil- 
 grim" nor to the romantic circumstances in the plot of 
 "The American." I have in mind that sober work of 
 later years in which is carried furthest the cultivation of 
 psychological niceties. 
 
 This may seem a paradox, considering how generally 
 psychological niceties are associated with the notion of 
 realism. But the romantic impression here arises pre- 
 cisely from the extreme to which this tendency of James 
 is pushed. The motives of his characters are refined 
 to such a point as to make them seem not characters in 
 "real life." 
 
 I should be the last to pronounce his characters not 
 true to life. One reader at least has had the good fortune 
 actually to know in person Maggie Verver and Kate Croy 
 and Fleda Vetch. The circumstances may not have been 
 the same — since life is often so much less generous of 
 material than fiction — ^but the same qualities were present 
 
Romance 121 
 
 to work upon whatever material offered. And that is 
 surely enough to make one hesitate to question the reality 
 of anything in James. 
 
 But still, how many of us are familiar with a society* 
 so "hi ghly civil ized" as this he paints ? Fi gures lik e these 
 •iro ot mnct tViP ]-f)rp py^^'pytippg, and are not olten accom- 
 panied by satellites who can take and give cues and play 
 out the scene with them. And again, as I have said, life 
 does not always furnish material rich enough for such 
 artists to work in ; it is presumable that even they cannot 
 make their lives one consistent pattern of this quality. 
 What one finds in life are intimations, fragments, 
 momentary and fleeting sensitivenesses and points of 
 view, that remind one of the world of James. These very 
 fine motives are not apparently such as govern constantly 
 people's conduct, even that of those who most suggest 
 his people. They seem indeed a luxury beyond the com- 
 mand of even the cultivated in ordinary circumstances. 
 The people we know appear to be more governed by pas-" 
 sions, by the primitive needs, by dull unromantic obliga- 
 tions, by the cruder social requirements and limitations.' 
 The professional character is more prominent in ordinary 
 life: our friends have not put behind them their ambi- 
 tions, have not so completely divested themselves as 
 rhristn pher New man Or Chad Newsome of their indus-' 
 trial rnnnf^rtio iiwp And these things count for more in 
 every move and calculation. There are things we simply 
 want: there are things we must have; there are things 
 we must do without; and all these things are present 
 to limit and condition our thought and action. And then 
 there is accident: there is that crude interposition of 
 chance that Mr. Hardy can never bring himself to forget. 
 This may not be so important in life as in the stories of 
 Hardy ; or it may not be significant enough poetically to 
 
122 The Method of Henry James 
 
 justify its extreme prominence there. But it is a large 
 item in life ; it is a feature without which we can hardly 
 recognize truth to life in fiction. And it is a most brutal 
 and disturbing factor. It interferes with the weaving of 
 patterns. 
 
 The people we know do not so consistently as the 
 characters of James make a conscious art of life. They 
 apply art to this or that detail or relation; but they 
 cannot, or they will not take the trouble to make their 
 whole life a work of considered beauty. The people of 
 James are mostly rich or in some way raised above the 
 necessity of earning their bread. Their relationships 
 are greatly simplified to make them still more free. They 
 are often free from the ordinary scruples of the man 
 in the street, free from the New England conscience in 
 its cruder aspects. Being very clever, they are free from 
 the intellectual limitations under which plain people labor. 
 They are preternaturally free, living in a moral vacuum, 
 as it were. Moreover, the elements of life are simplified 
 to an extreme degree, everything in any way irrelevant 
 being shut out from all consideration. Under this head 
 come the social and religious movements and struggles 
 so prominent in George Eliot and Meredith and so many 
 of their successors. It is perhaps just the irrelevant 
 matters — as they would be for James — that create more 
 than anything else in the ordinary novel the illusion of 
 everyday life. So that it seems a rarefied and trans- 
 cendental atmosphere into which James lifts us, an atmos- 
 phere in which there is nothing to impede the free action 
 of spirits. 
 
 This atmosphere he has given a semi-physical counter- 
 part in the air of the English country-house which he has 
 so often described, and to which he returns so regularly 
 for the scene of his action. It is an air of ample leisure- 
 
Romance 123 
 
 liness, in which every provision is made for the conven- 
 ience of people bent on liberal freedom of intercourse. 
 Such was the air in which Hyacinth Robinson made his 
 long visit with the Princess Casamassima ; that in which 
 Nanda Brookenham and "Mitchy" disposed, under the 
 favoring auspices of Mr. Longdon, of the fates of them- 
 selves and Vanderbank and little Aggie; that in which 
 Maggie Verver and her father skirted and kept clear of 
 the subject of Maggie's great struggle with Charlotte 
 Stant. As James puts it in one of his tales/ "Life was, 
 indeed, well understood in these great conditions; the 
 conditions constituted, in their greatness, a kind of funda- 
 mental facility, provided a general exemption, bathed 
 the hour, whatever it was, in a universal blandness, that 
 were all a happy solvent for awkward relations." James 
 is fond of evoking a sense of lingering afternoon and 
 hours given over to the luxury of unhurried reflection. 
 "The day had been warm and splendid and this moment 
 of its wane . . . which seemed to say that whenever, in 
 such a house, there was space, there was also, benignantly, 
 time — formed, of the whole procession of the hours, 
 the one dearest to our friend, who, on such occasions, 
 interposed it, whenever he could, between the set of im- 
 pressions that ended and the set that began with 'dress- 
 ing.' . . . The air of the place, with the immense house 
 all seated aloft in strength, robed with summer and 
 crowned with success, was such as to contribute some- 
 thing of its own to the poetry of early evening. This 
 visitor, at any rate, saw and felt it all through one of 
 those fine hazes of August that remind you ... of the 
 artful gauze stretched across the stage of a theatre when 
 an eifect of mystery, or some particular pantomimic 
 
 1 "Broken Wings," in "The Century," December, 1900. 
 
124- The Method of Henry James 
 
 ravishment, is desired." In such a world as this, all 
 , factitious impediments are smoothed away, and one may 
 'give oneself up, undiverted, to the cultivation of one's 
 "impressions." No longer subject to the humiliating 
 conditions of animal Hfe, one may work out the pure 
 spiritual pattern of one's experience ! 
 
 There is nothing about all this that is not "true to 
 life." Such happy combinations of character and condi- 
 tion are by no means inconceivable ; and for the honor of 
 our mortal estate, we hope they may be frequently found 
 in fact. But they are not the combinations that stand 
 out most prominently in a cursory survey of our sur- 
 roundings. They must be, in a work of fiction, the result 
 of the most deliberate selection. And they must strike 
 most readers as being artificial to a high degree. If we 
 do not yield ourselves willingly to the spell of this en- 
 chanter, if we find ourselves caught, in sterner moments, 
 between our realism and his romance, then we are lost. 
 Then we are likely to feel irritation at an author who asks 
 us to take for granted so perfectly well-ordere^^ajsodd. 
 And our irritation is likely to extend to his people, who 
 seem to have nothing to do but refine upon their motives, 
 or — in more brutal English — split hairs. It is in such 
 realist, sceptical mood that we ask of our friend "Mitchy" 
 in "The Awkward Age," is he really a man? Would a 
 real man have allowed himself to be persuaded to marry 
 the girl he didn't care for in order to help the girl he did 
 care for to make a better match? And would he have 
 found his comfort for life in sharing, like a child, a secret 
 with the girl he loved — ^ that being the means by which 
 the two were drawn into confederacy? Is it not a com- 
 fort somewhat too metaphysical for human nature's daily 
 
 2 See p. 3S2, Vol. IX. 
 
Romance 125 
 
 need ? Or again — in dissident mood — we grow impatient 
 with the Prince Amerigo and Charlotte Stant as they spin 
 the gossamer web of their relation to Maggie and her 
 father. Is it a joke, this pretense of theirs that, because 
 Maggie must be allowed to pair off with her father, they 
 should lend themselves to the arrangement by pairing 
 off themselves ? Do they take seriously this way of justi- 
 fying what in plain English we call adultery ? We might 
 more readily entertain the simple plea of their being in 
 love. But being in love — in this simple fashion — is really 
 too vulgar a fact, it seems, for a world no longer subject 
 to the conditions of animal Hfe. Too vulgar at least for 
 mention in plain English. Meredith had a word, we 
 remind ourselves, for people of this manner of thinking. 
 He called them sentimentalists — and he never let them 
 off as easily ^s they are let off here. He never let them 
 go till he had made them ridiculous. 
 
 James has, in his essay on Maupassant, an interesting 
 apology for the psychological method in fiction. He is 
 speaking of Maupassant's opinion that "the analytic 
 fashion of telling a story" is "much less profitable than 
 the simple epic manner which 'avoids with care all com- 
 plicated explanations, all dissertations upon motives, and 
 confines itself to making persons and events pass before 
 our eyes.' " 
 
 When it is a question of an artistic process, [Mr. 
 James rejoins] we must always distrust very sharp dis- 
 tinctions, for there is surely in every method a little of 
 every other method. It is as difficult to describe an action 
 without glancing at its motive, its moral history, as it is 
 to describe a motive without glancing at its practical 
 consequence. Our history and our fiction are what we 
 do; but it is surely not more easy to determine where 
 what we do begins than to determine where it ends — 
 
126 The Method of Henry James 
 
 notoriously a hopeless task. It would take a very subtle 
 sense to draw a hard and fast line on the border-land 
 of explanation and illustration. If psychology be hidden 
 in life, as, according to M. de Maupassant, it should be 
 in a book, the question immediately comes up, "From 
 whom is it hidden?" From some people, no doubt, but 
 very much less from others; and all depends upon the 
 observer, the nature of one's observation, and one's 
 curiosity. For some people motives, relations, explana- 
 tions, are a part of the very surface of the drama, with 
 the footlights beating full upon them. For me an act, 
 an incident, an attitude, may be a sharp, detached, iso- 
 lated thing, of which I give a full account in saying that 
 such and such a way it came off. For you it may be 
 hung about with implications, with relations and condi- 
 tions as necessary to help you to recognize it as the clothes 
 of your friends are to help you to recognize them in the 
 street.' 
 
 This critique appeared in 1888, at the close of the less 
 analytic period of his writing, and is like an anticipatory 
 apology for the work that was to follow. Only the most 
 irreconcilable enemy of the psychological will deny the 
 truth of his contention or begrudge him a reasonable 
 indulgence in what he calls himself "his irrepressible and 
 insatiable, his extravagant and immoral, interest in per- 
 sonal character and in the 'nature' of a mind."* But at 
 times one has the feeling that he has put the cart before 
 the horse, — ^that he is no longer interested in his friends 
 so much as in the clothes they wear. He seems willing 
 altogether to neglect his act, or incident, or attitude, 
 in favor of "the implications, the relations and conditions 
 necessary to help you to recognise it." And what is 
 particularly irritating to one in the critical spirit is that 
 
 3 "Partial Portraits," pp. 2S6-2S7. 
 
 * Said in connection with "In a Cage," Vol. XI, p. xx. 
 
Romance 12/ 
 
 not only the author but his creatures too have so largely 
 abandoned themselves to the pursuit of motive for mo- 
 tive's sake. They seem at times to pride themselves on j 
 nothing but their cleverness, their penetration of one) 
 another's subtleties, the spirit of magnificent "general 
 intelligence" in which they conduct their mutual relations.\ 
 The height of this self -consciousness is reached in "The' 
 Awkward Age," where it is necessary for one of the 
 ringleaders to suggest to another member of the coterie 
 for them "not to be so awfully clever as to make it 
 believed they can never be simple";" and where not 
 merely the grown-up members of Mrs. Brookenham's 
 circle prove themselves unfailingly "wonderful" or 
 "beautiful" for the high line they take, but where even 
 the jeune fille must needs have a "system" of her own, — 
 and such a system ! — ^and must needs work out with her 
 suitors refinements one degree higher than her mother's. 
 
 Of course, we at once remind ourselves, "The Awk- 
 ward Age" is intended for a picture of decadent society, 
 and we must always reckon with the gently ironical light 
 in which these characters are supposed to be shown. 
 This consideration may apply still more to "The Sacred 
 Fount" and the "marvel of our civilized state" presented 
 there by the rival interpreters. But it does not so clearly 
 apply to "The Wings of the Dove" and "The Golden 
 Bowl." There is little to show that the author is not 
 offering us Charlotte Stant and the Prince Amerigo, 
 Kate Croy and Merton Densher, as genuine examples of 
 the ideally civilized statfe. And certainly the self-con- 
 sciousness and the passion for analytical refinements 
 indulged in by these pairs of lovers are hardly less remark- 
 able than those of Mrs. Brookenham's circle of dilettanti. 
 I have referred to the process by which Charlotte and the 
 
 = Vol. IX, p. 303. 
 
128 The Method of Henry James 
 
 Prince persuaded themselves of the inevitability and 
 beautiful propriety of their liaison. "The whole demon- 
 stration," it seemed to them, was "taking place at a very 
 high level of debate — in the cool upper air of the finer 
 discrimination, the deeper sincerity, the larger philoso- 
 phy." * There has never been a more pointed illustration 
 of the "fine shades" and "nice feelings" made ridiculous 
 by Meredith in "Sandra Belloni." Perhaps we are to 
 understand here that such sophistication is the only 
 medium in which a guilty love may be made to assume 
 an air of decency. But the innocence of Kate Croy and 
 Merton Densher talks the same language on the occasion 
 when they first pledge themselves to one another. . . . 
 
 They were talking, for the time, with the strangest 
 mixture of deliberation and directness, and nothing could 
 have been more in the tone of it than the way she at 
 last said — [Well, it doesn't matter to us now what she 
 said.] He gave a rather glazed smile. "For young 
 persons of a great distinction and a very high spirit we're 
 a caution !" "Yes," she took it straight up : "we're hide- 
 ously intelligent. But there's fun in it too. We must 
 get our fun, where we can. I think," she added, and for 
 that matter not without courage, "our relation's quite 
 beautiful. It's not a bit' vulgar. I cling to some saving 
 romance in things."^ 
 
 Any one who reads through the conversation that follows 
 will agree that their relation is not a bit vulgar. As for 
 Milly Theale, while she is not given the same opportunity 
 in conversation to make fine points, she does it abun- 
 dantly in the privacy of her own reflections. She makes 
 the most beautiful of points in regard to Kate, who lends 
 herself so well to such treatment. For Milly "had amuse- 
 
 « Vol. XXIII, pp. 300-301. 
 " Vol. XIX, p. 72. 
 
Romance 129 
 
 ments of thought that were like the secrecies of a little 
 girl playing with dolls when conventionally 'too big.' "* 
 Perhaps the reader would like a bit of a reminder here 
 of the nature of the amusements referred to. In the fol- 
 lowing passage, Milly is interrogating herself as to her 
 sensations on realizing that the great doctor knows 
 "everything" about her condition. 
 
 Now she knew not only that she didn't dislike this — 
 the state of being found out about ; but that on the con- 
 trary it was truly what she had come for, and that for 
 the time at least it would give her something firm to stand 
 on. She struck herself as aware, aware as she had never 
 been, of really not having had from the beginning any- 
 thing firm. It would be strange for the firmness to come, 
 after all, from her learning in these agreeable conditions 
 that she was in some way doomed; but above all it 
 would prove how little she had hitherto had to hold her 
 up. If she was now to be held up by the mere process — 
 since that was perhaps on the cards — of being let down, 
 this would only testify in turn to her queer little history. 
 That sense of loosely rattling had been no process at all ; 
 and it was ridiculously true that her thus sitting there 
 to see her life put into the scales represented her first 
 approach to the taste of orderly living. Such was Milly's 
 romantic version — that her life, especially by the fact of 
 this second interview, was put into the scales; and just 
 the best part of the relation established might have been, 
 for that matter, that the great grave charming man knew, 
 had known at once, that it was romantic, and in that 
 measure allowed for it. Her only doubt, her only fear, 
 was whether he perhaps wouldn't even take advantage 
 of her being a little romantic to treat her as romantic 
 altogether.' 
 
 It is hard to realize that all these fleecy paradoxes are 
 woven about the hard question of a bodily ailment ; that 
 
 » Vol. XIX, p. 212. 
 « Id., p. 236. 
 
ISO The Method of Henry James 
 
 nothing less important hangs upon this doctor's knowl- 
 edge than the issue of life and death. 
 
 One thing must be granted for these people. They are 
 not, hke the ladies and gentlemen in Lyly's "Euphues," 
 playing a mere dialectic game, a game that has no 
 beginning or end. However fine their points may be, 
 they have a relation to the general point at issue. And 
 however roundabout a road they may be taking, it is a 
 road that leads them towards their goal. This may be 
 sufficient to acquit them of the charge of sentimentalistn. 
 For the sensations of the sentimentalist are beautiful on 
 the sole condition of being sterile. 
 
 In any case our irritation is a passing cloud in the clear 
 sky of our felicity. We have but to grant the premises 
 of this philosopher, we have but to take his world as he 
 offers it, to feel his own luxury in the contemplation of 
 mental evolutions. We love to lose ourselves in the 
 warm, thick-sprouting jungle of human nature as he 
 conjures it up. He does beguile us royally. He flatters 
 us to the top of our bent. He stimulates our imagination 
 like a drug. Our own experience is colored by this 
 medium in which we are plunged so deep. For a long 
 time after reading James, we find ourselves living in this 
 romantic world. We discover motives of a refinement 
 hitherto unsuspected. Our own talk at the dancing club 
 ' or over the bridge table is full of significances ordinarily 
 not discerned. In short we are like the young ladies who 
 used to read the romances of Mrs. Radcliffe or Mile, de 
 Scudery, or the young men who still read "The Talis- 
 man," "The Last of the Mohicans" and "The Count of 
 Monte Cristo." 
 
XI 
 ETHICS 
 
 An earlier chapter is devoted to the uniformity of tone 
 in James. It might have been called the neutrality of 
 tone, since almost every possible attitude of the author 
 liable to color the subject is ruled out in his ideal. Among 
 other attitudes thus eliminated is a moral attitude. And 
 so we have as a peculiarity of James among the masters 
 of fiction in English his moral detachment or neutrality.. 
 
 The earlier English novelists all took pride in putting 
 themselves into the story. They thought it right to show 
 how much they were concerned in the behavior of their 
 characters, to let the reader know how he should take 
 them by means of the tone of satire, of sentiment, of 
 moralizing philosophy. Fielding takes frequent occasion 
 to pause and assure us he is not recommending the 
 impiety of Mr. Square or the naughtiness of Tom Jones. 
 Sterne is always making love to his characters. George 
 Eliot and Meredith are still very far from the impersonal 
 or "objective" manner so natural to French writers of 
 fiction. But in James we have the same neutrality that 
 has been since affected by Mr. George Moore, by Mrs. 
 Wharton, by Mr. Galsworthy and so many other distin- 
 guished English novelists. Perhaps the likeness is 
 greatest to Mr. Conrad. For at his best Conrad, like 
 James, gets his effect of neutrality by mearp^ of — or is 
 it in spite of ? — his method of presenting the whole action 
 from the point of view of the characters. The author 
 in this method shows himself no parti pris. He passes 
 
J32 The Method of Henry James 
 
 no judgments upon his creatures. He does not even ask 
 you to pass judgment; he simply invites you to the 
 enjoyment of his picture. If Fleda Vetch's philosophy 
 is to be preferred to that of Mrs. Gereth, if Maggie Ver- 
 ver's to Charlotte Stant's, it is not the author who tells 
 you so. You have to find it out for yourself. 
 
 It is interesting to speculate how other novelists would 
 have treated the themes of James. In "The Spoils of 
 Poynton," George Eliot would, I suppose, have agreed 
 in preferring Fleda to Mrs. Gereth ; and she would have 
 let you know rather promptly how well Fleda typified the 
 eternal beauty of a scrupulous conscience. Meredith 
 would probably have taken sides with Mrs. Gereth as 
 being a representative of common sense; and he would 
 not have hesitated to call Fleda a sentimentalist, and to 
 explain how she is preferring imaginary values to real 
 ones and sacrificing the happiness of four people to her 
 own spiritual vanity. It is clear that James admires 
 Fleda most ; but the only way in which he favors her is 
 by making hers the interpreting consciousness. 
 
 This is not a method grateful to the "man in the street." 
 It makes him too responsible. And that is not what he 
 likes. For while he is generally moral, tremendously 
 moral, he wants the responsibility laid elsewhere. And 
 we are mostly ourselves the man in the street, — enough 
 so to suspect this moral neutrality — when carried to such 
 lengths — of being indistinguishable from moral inditfer- 
 ence. Thus James falls under the general suspicion 
 attaching to "foreign" writers of fiction. 
 
 This is one of the curiosities of literary history, that 
 Henry James should be suspected of moral indifference 
 and confused with the foreign sinners of his day. He has 
 taken pains enough in his critical writing to make clear 
 his attitude in the matter. He is indeed indulgent of 
 
Ethics /j5 
 
 any conscientious literary art, and he does not wish to 
 coerce anyone against his bent or his natural philosophy. 
 But it is plain that he prefers a view of life that takes 
 largely into account moral considerations ; and that while 
 he deprecates the characteristic timidity of English 
 novelists in regard to certain aspects of morality/ he 
 yet on the whole thinks highly of them for their moral 
 complexion. In an essay on TroUope, comparing English 
 writers of fiction with French, James remarks that the 
 English "have been more at home in the moral world; 
 as people say today they know their way about the con- 
 science."^ Most penetrating criticism of non-moral ten- 
 dencies in certain foreign fiction is to be found in James's 
 essays on Maupassant and D'Annunzio. In the case of 
 Maupassant, the American novelist was obviously con- 
 fronted with a problem which he was anxious to solve. 
 He was deeply concerned to find some way of reconciling 
 the vile cynicism of this author with his high and serious 
 art. This he does simply by denying to the French story- 
 teller the possession of a moral sense. 
 
 The truth is that the admirable system of simplification 
 which makes his tales so rapid and concise . . . strikes 
 us as not in the least a conscious intellectual effort, a 
 selective, comparative process. He tells us all he knows, 
 all he suspects, and if these things take no account of the 
 moral nature of man, it is because he has no window 
 looking in that direction, and not because artistic scruples 
 have compelled him to close it up. The very compact 
 mansion in which he dwells presents on that side a per- 
 fectly dead wall. . . .* If he is a master of his art 
 and it is discouraging to find what low views are compati- 
 ble with mastery, there is satisfaction, on the other hand, 
 
 1 In the essay on "The Art of Fiction" in "Partial Portraits." 
 
 2 "Partial Portraits," p. 124. 
 «Id., p. 258. 
 
134 "The Method of Henry James 
 
 in learning on what particular condition he holds his 
 strange success. This condition, it seems to me, is that 
 of having totally omitted one of the items of the 
 problem.* 
 
 We may be sure that James did not intend himself 
 to omit any of the items of the problem. These passages 
 are from the essay quoted in my last chapter in which he 
 defends the use of "psychology." The psychology of 
 James is nothing but an extended delineation of the moral 
 aspects of life. The sense of his moral indifiference which 
 some people get from a hasty reading must derive partly, 
 as I have intimated, from the neutrality of treatment. 
 And it derives partly too from the fact that the moral 
 values of James are not at once recognized for those of 
 the man in the street. It may be that James does mani- 
 fest an indifiference to questions of conduct on the ordi- 
 nary plane, such questions as are gravely featured in "The 
 Second Mrs. Tanqueray" and "The Notorious Mrs. 
 Ebbsmith." He flies in a loftier air, where one has no 
 encounter with the vulgar temptations, or where at least 
 they are not seen in the simple vulgar light. There is — 
 particularly in the later novels — scarcely a hint of the 
 principle of duty as such, the principle that has figured 
 so largely in the moral system of New England. We are 
 not here concerned with the morality of the decalogue 
 and the police court, with what is known as "conven- 
 tional mor ality." Some of his most favored characters 
 are at times shown indulgent to violations of this conven- 
 tional code, if not actually indifferent to it. Thus Chris- 
 topher Newman, while "going in" himself for the highest 
 luxury in the article of love, does not feel called upon to 
 break with, or preach at, his Parisian friend whose ideal 
 
 * "Partial Portraits," p. 284. 
 
Ethics 135 
 
 is so much lower. Merton Densher, who can with diffi- 
 culty stomach the way his fiancee proposes to work their 
 American friend, actually requires Kate to sacrifice her 
 innocence, as we say, in order to prove her sincerity. 
 Maggie Verver and her father cannot find it in their 
 hearts to hate or condemn the unfaithful partners who 
 have taken up so unnatural an alliance ; and Maggie wins 
 back her husband precisely through the magnanimous 
 way in which she takes the situation. Lambert Strether, 
 who is the very incarnation of the New England con- 
 science, feels botmd to declare in the end for the con- 
 tinuance of an adulterous relation — ^to put it in legal 
 terms — as the clear mandate of gratitude and good faith. 
 It is true that, on the whole, the conventional morality 
 does not come out so badly after all. It comes out much 
 better in James than in most of his successors in the 
 English novel. The case of Chad in "The Ambassadors" 
 is really quite exceptional with James. One must remem- 
 ber how Madame de Mauves requires her chivalrous 
 lover to sacrifice his passion to an ideal of fineness ; how ' 
 Isabel Archer goes back to her detestable husband ; how 
 Maisie's bewildered little conscience at last revolts 
 against Sir Claude's living with Mrs. Beale; how tri- 
 umphant is Maggie Verver in the end over the charms 
 of her unscrupulous rival. James is by no means a 
 revolutionary or a radical. He has nothing in common 
 with those novelists and playwrights of our day who 
 want to make over the structure of society. He is a 
 gentleman of cultivated and conservative, not to say 
 reactionary, instinct, who seems to take great pleasure 
 in the present state of things. His instinct will generallj 
 in the end be found to favor the same line of conduct as 
 that favored by the ecclesiastical and civil law, as far as 
 the law goes. 
 
rjtf The Method of Henry James 
 
 The point is that it is instinct, or intuition, that deter- 
 mines these matters for him. And his ethical reactions 
 seem to be very little affected by the practical bearing 
 of the conduct under consideration. The avoidance of 
 pain and the attainment of happiness are not the matters 
 of first importance. In brief, his ethics are not utilitarian. 
 Still less does he conceive of morality, in the fashion 
 of those who make an "economic interpretation of his- 
 tory," as the product ultimately of industrial conditions, 
 as accordingly relative and having no higher sanction 
 than the social order that produces it. The morality of 
 James is serenely unconscious of any such low origins. 
 
 Now the ethics of most of us, in so far as they are 
 not conventional or traditional, are frankly utilitarian. 
 We argue that such a line of conduct is wrong because 
 it is socially harmful ; that such a line of conduct is right 
 because in the long run it leads to the greatest good of 
 the greatest number. When we condemn horse-stealing 
 or wife-stealing, we can cite the most practical of reasons. 
 That is where James dififers from us. The best reason 
 he can find for condemning or approving a given course 
 of action is that it is ugly or beautiful as the case may be. 
 That is in the last analysis why he suffers suspicion in a 
 world of practical people. 
 
 When we bring it down to particulars, we find it 
 comes to much the same thing in the end. Our morality, 
 like our food and our material arrangements, has been 
 pretty well standardized; and the ethics of James are 
 found, on inspection, to be the usual idealistic, or "bour- 
 geois," or Christian ethics. 
 
 Let us enumerate the several virtues most highly 
 recommended by the example of his heroes and heroines. 
 We cannot do better than begin, however, with his criti- 
 cism of the ethics — or sentimental esthetics — of his 
 
Ethics 157 
 
 Italian contemporary, D'Annunzio. The erotic adven- 
 tures of D'Annnnzio's people James finds most unsatis- 
 factory because they remain so purely matters of sensa- 
 tion, so brief and isolated, bearing so little relation to 
 the general course of life and conduct. I must cite but 
 one or two from the many keen observations of our 
 ciitic. "That sexual passion," says Mr. James, "from 
 which he extracts such admirable detached pictures in- 
 sists on remaining for him only the act of a moment, 
 beginning and ending in itself and disowning any repre- 
 sentative character. . . . Shut out from the rest of life, 
 shut out from all fruition and assimilation, it has no 
 more dignity than — ^to use a homely image — ^the boots 
 and shoes that we see, in the corridors of promiscuous 
 hotels, standing, often in double pairs, at the doors of 
 rooms. . . . What the participants do with their agita- 
 tion, in short, or even what it does with them, that is the 
 stuff of poetry, and it is never really interesting save 
 when something finely contributive in themselves makes 
 it so. It is this absence of anything finely contributive 
 in themselves, on the part of the various couples here 
 concerned, that is the open door to the trivial."" One 
 will note the terms of approval and condemnation. The 
 great sin is to be trivial, and the great virtue is to have 
 dignity. In order for love to have dignity, it must be 
 more than "the act of a moment, beginning and ending 
 in itself and disowning any representative character." To 
 have representative character it must stand for something 
 in sentiment, in personal relations. And in order to 
 correspond to anything in sentiment it must have dura^ 
 tion, so that there may be some wholeness or continuity 
 in the pattern of one's conduct. "How otherwise than 
 
 » "Notes on Novelists," p. 292. 
 
1^8 The Method of Henry James 
 
 by the element of comparative duration do we obtain 
 the element of comparative good faith, on which we 
 depend for the element, in turn, of comparative dignity?"' 
 Here then we have the first of the virtues that charac- 
 terize the finest people of James, the virtue of c onstanc y, 
 or f aithf ulnesstoa relation. When Isabel Archer returns 
 to lier nusband,lirspite of the certainty of unhappiness 
 with him, it is not altogether, it is not mainly, I think, 
 on account of Pansy and what she owes to her unpro- 
 tected state. Or Pansy is thought of as but one factor 
 in the general matrimonial situation. Isabel returns be- 
 cause her pride requires that she shall carry through 
 what she has undertaken, that the stuff of her life may 
 not be left torn and ragged. Osmond himself had 
 expressed it for her in their last talk before her departure 
 for England. He had reminded her of their inescapable 
 nearness to one another, as husband and wife. It might 
 be a disagreeable proximity, but it was one of their own 
 deliberate making. "I think," says Osmond "we should 
 accept the consequences of our actions, and what I value 
 most in life is the honour of the thing." These words 
 "were not a command, they constituted a kind of appeal ; 
 and, though she felt that any expression of respect on his 
 part could only be a refinement of egotism, they 
 represented something transcendent and absolute, like the 
 sign of the cross or the flag of one's country."'' It is 
 even more obviously this virtue of constancy that prevails 
 in "The Ambassadors" because of its being constancy 
 to a relation not conventionally right. To all intents and 
 purposes, it seems to Strether, Chad Newsome is the 
 husband of Madame de Vionnet. It is he that is bound 
 to her by gratitude for all that this relation has meant 
 
 « "Notes on Novelists," p. 286. 
 7 Vol. IV, p. 356. 
 
Ethics j_jp 
 
 in the development of his personality. It is he whose 
 moral dignity depends upon the continuance of a relation 
 long estabHshed and grounded in sentiment and taste. 
 He stands, in this story, in the same relation to his mis- 
 tress as Cressida, before her breach of faith, stands to ' 
 her lover Troilus. 
 
 So important is this virtue of constancy to an estab- 
 lished relation, so important is duration in love, that when 
 the heart of Merton Densher, in "The Wings of the 
 Dove," begins to turn from his unscrupulous fiancee 
 to the finer woman whom she wishes to "use," he begins 
 to realize how far back their acquaintance really dates. 
 It was not Kate and her aunt who first introduced him 
 to Milly Theale in England. He had known her first, 
 in the hazy period of his stay in New York. "Behind 
 ever)rthing for him was his renewed remembrance, which 
 had fairly become a habit, that he had been the first to 
 know her. ... Its influence had been all there, been 
 in the high-hung rumbling carriage with them, from the 
 moment she took him to drive, covering them in together 
 as if it had been a rug of softest silk. It had worked 
 as a dear connexion with something lodged in the past, 
 something already their own. . . . He was not there, not 
 just as he was in so doing it, through Kate and Kate's 
 idea, but through Milly and Milly's own, and through 
 himself and his own, unmistakably — as well as through 
 the little facts, whatever they had amounted to, of his 
 time in New York."® It is thus that he reconciles his 
 conscience obscurely to the obscure transfer of allegiance 
 that he is making by giving the greatest possible sense of 
 intimacy and extent to the chronologically more recent 
 of his relations. It is thus that he violates constancy in 
 the very name of constancy. 
 
 «VoI. XX, pp. 185-186. 
 
140 The Method of Henry James 
 
 On this same branch grows the twin virtue of good 
 faith. It is, we learn, comparative good faith whicn 
 is mdispensable to comparative moral dignity. There is 
 very little of the comparative in the good faith which 
 James exacts of his principal characters. Nothing short 
 of absolute is that of Rowland Mallet and Mary Garland. 
 Isabel Archer comes back to assured misery in order to 
 meet what her mean husband calls "the honour of the 
 thing." Fleda Vetch makes a still greater safcrifice to 
 what many would deem a Quixotic sense of honor. If 
 we have the feeling that Chad Newsome will in the end 
 prove unfaithful to Madame de Vionnet, this arises from 
 our very suspicion that his character is not up to the 
 standard of his personality. Merton Densher finds he 
 cannot lie to Milly Theale as required by Kate's program. 
 If he had lied about their engagement, he explains to 
 Kate, he would have been obliged to make the lie true.' 
 
 But there is a virtue more distinctively Christian than 
 honor that figures largely in the stories of James. That is 
 unselfishn ess, or self-devotion to the h appiness o f others. 
 Rowland" Mallet is the shmmg example m. the earlier 
 novels. But the largest number and the most interesting 
 of these martyrs are to be found in the later group. For 
 here it is that we have Fleda Vetch and "Mitchy" and 
 Milly Theale. Here also we have the interesting case 
 of Maggie Verver, who, in order to get back her husband 
 and yet spare the feelings of her rival, consents in one 
 scene even to play the part of a mean and jealous woman, 
 and so make a sacrifice of what is perhaps our most 
 precious asset, vanity.^* Of course she does not make 
 her sacrifice for nothing, and yet it is a beautiful exhibi- 
 tion of generosity of spirit. She wins her own personal 
 
 9Vol. XX, p. 325. 
 
 10 Chap. V. of the Fifth Book. 
 
Ethics i/fi 
 
 end by sinking herself so completely. Lambert Strether, 
 on the other hand, like Fleda and Milly and Mitchy, gives 
 up all and has nothing to show for it. He might have 
 had Maria Gostrey, and a very good bargain it would 
 have been. But as he explains to her, in order to be right 
 he must "not, out of the whole affair, have got anything 
 for himself."" 
 
 Not anything, that is, of course, but the consciousness 
 of being "right," or some such insubstantial gain as that. 
 The capacity for self-devotion implies an unusually high 
 appreciation of immaterial values. The ethical values of 
 James are always of the most immaterial. They are ^ 
 never represented in religious any more than in utilitarian 
 terms.^^ The rewards of a future life count for nothing 
 with the characters of James. Self-sacrifice is not a 
 word in their vocabulary. They never think of their 
 sacrifices as being made for some "far gain." Their 
 morality is an affair of sentiment, or of taste. Their 
 creator is capable of speaking of his characters' moral 
 good taste." The art of life which they are all practicing 
 so assiduously is an art the materials of which are what 
 we call moral — only, as we have seen, they are so pre- 
 sented that the man in the street might utterly fail to 
 indentify them as such. We can best express it perhaps 
 by calling it a transcendental morality. It is all con- 
 ceived in that spiritual realm where the bounds of taste ^ 
 and moralily run together and become indistinguishable. 
 
 So far as I know, James has found appreciation, where 
 
 " Vol. XXII, p. 326. 
 
 12 1 am not forgetting either that the finer type of Utilitarian 
 has place for many immaterial things among his more substantial 
 "utilities." 
 
 13 Apropos of "Aunt Pinnie" in "The Princess Casamassima," 
 Vol. V, p. 68. 
 
142 The Method of Henry James 
 
 he has found it at all, almost exclusively among English 
 and American readers. And while I cannot at all clearly 
 explain what I mean, I feel that his appeal is necessarily 
 limited to the Anglo-Saxon moral sentiment. The pecu- 
 liar quality of spiritual life here delineated is English, 
 or still more perhaps American, and a quality not readily 
 intelligible to the French mind, for example. The same 
 quality is to be felt in Emerson and in Wordsworth. The 
 reader may remember the passage in "Madame de Mau- 
 ves" in which M. de Mauves appeals to the young Ameri- 
 can who is paying attentions to his wife, on the subject of 
 her reading. It is a passage of the highest irony for the 
 Anglo-Saxon reader. " 'I doubt if your English authors,' 
 the Count [remarked] with a serenity which Longmore 
 afterwards characterized as sublime, 'are very sound 
 reading for young married women. I don't pretend to 
 know very much about them; but I remember that not 
 long after our marriage Madame de Mauves under- 
 took to read me one day some passages from a certain 
 Wordsworth — ^ poet highly esteemed, it appears, chez 
 vous. It was as if she had taken me by the nape of the 
 neck and held my head for half an hour over a basin of 
 soupe aux choux: I felt as if we ought to ventilate the 
 drawingroom before any one called. But I suppose you 
 know him — ce genie-ld,. Every nation has its own ideals 
 of every kind, but when I remember some of our charm- 
 ing writers !' " He recommends Alfred de Musset ; and 
 he wishes his wife might do a little traveling, presum- 
 ably in company with Mr. Longmore. "It would enlarge 
 her horizon ... it would wake up her imagination."^* 
 We have a way, nous autres, of considering Wordsworth 
 very much of a stimulus to the imagination. I am aware 
 that one of the finest studies of Wordsworth has been 
 " Vol. XIII, p. 26S-266. 
 
Ethics 143 
 
 made by a French scholar. But I suppose it is not rash 
 to assert that M. de Mauves represents better the general 
 taste of his nation in this matter than M. Legouis. 
 
 At any rate foreigners have shown very little inclina- 
 tion to take to their bosoms Henry James. 
 
 This is not, I think, because of his extreme niceness 
 in psychological analysis. Some of the continental 
 writers have carried very far this same practice. It is 
 rather because of the peculiar psychology to which he 
 applies his analysis. With them the psychological de- 
 tails must make up together a picture of the broad pas- 
 sions and moral forces. They must foot up to something 
 Byronic or Balzacian. And this the niceties of James 
 would not seem to them to do. Mr. James tells us that 
 Turgenieff didn't take the trouble to read the novels 
 which he regularly sent as tribute to the master. Had 
 he read them, Mr. James opines, they would not have ap- 
 pealed to him. "He cared, more than anything else, for 
 the air of reality, and my reality was not to the purpose. 
 I do not think my stories struck him as quite meat for 
 men. The manner was more apparent than the matter; 
 they were too tarabiscotS, as I once heard him say of 
 the style of a book — ^had on the surface too many little 
 flowers and knots of ribbon."^" I wonder if Mr. James 
 did not make too much, in this guess, of the style of his 
 work, the beribboned surface. Was there not a deeper 
 reason why they would not have seemed'to the Russian 
 novelist "quite meat for men"? Was there not another 
 reason for their failing to have for certain readers "the 
 air of reality"? I fancy the great bar to appreciation 
 by foreigners would be that peculiar transcendentalism 
 or other-worldliness of motives in James. Was not 
 James in all this traceably a product of that mystical New 
 
 « "Partial Portraits," pp. 298-299. 
 
144 The Method of Henry James 
 
 England spirit represented so strongly in his Sweden- 
 borgian father and his religio-philosophical brother? 
 James may have been as expatriated an American as you 
 will; his stories laid at home may be particularly thin 
 and wanting in quality. But his most typical characters 
 are, with few exceptions, Americans ; and while the back- 
 ground is European, the psychology is Anglo-Saxon, and 
 what is more, Anglo-Saxon of Concord and Cambridge, 
 Mass. What "foreigner" could be expected really to 
 appreciate the character of Milly Theale or Maggie Ver- 
 ver, of Lambert Strether or even of little Maisie? 
 
 This is all, to be sure, a highly speculative matter. No 
 one knows what are the traits of the American character 
 at the present moment, or what our national ideals are 
 going to show themselves when formed. But we do 
 know something of a certain American spirit that flow- 
 ered about Boston in the days of Theodore Parker; and 
 I find a strong tincture of this spirit in the ethics of 
 Henry James. If my finding be correct, it should make 
 us hesitate the less to rank James not merely as the great- 
 est novelist born in America, but as our greatest Ameri- 
 can novelist. He may not be American as Mark Twain 
 or Benjamin Franklin or Edgar Lee Masters are Ameri- 
 can, but he is American as Emerson and Thoreau and 
 Hawthorne are. 
 
THE FIGURE IN THE CARPET 
 
 There is one group among the shorter stories of James 
 that has a peculiar interest for anyone seeking hints 
 and revelations of the personal experience, the temper 
 and ideals of their author. It comprises nearly a dozen 
 tales dealing with writers of fiction. It is of course 
 a hazardous business making inferences in regard to 
 James from any of these stories. The information we 
 may suppose ourselves to derive from them is neither so 
 substantial, so technical, nor so authoritative as what he 
 offers us in the Prefaces. But it is not the less precious 
 on that account. If, with tact and discretion, we do learn 
 something from these stories about his attitude towards 
 his art, it will be something of an intimacy nowhere else 
 to be felt. It will be something, say, which modesty 
 and pride forbade him to let us have straight from him- 
 self ; but something he might be willing for us to learn 
 by sympathetic inference, laying upon us the whole 
 responsibility of assertion. 
 
 Most fascinating of all these tales, and the one which 
 constitutes the greatest temptation for the interpreter of 
 James, is "The Figure in the Carpet."^ For here he 
 shows us a novelist of rare distinction flinging down to 
 the eager critic the challenge of his secret. The critic 
 is a clever fellow, a "demon of subtlety"; but he has 
 failed, like everyone else, to discover the "little point" 
 the novelist most wishes to make. In fact he has to be 
 informed that there is any such little point to be dis- 
 covered, that there is a "particular thing" the novelist has 
 
 1 Vol. XV. Quototions are from pp. 229-235 and p. 240. 
 
146 The Method of Henry James 
 
 "written his books most for." "Isn't there for every 
 writer," asks Hugh Vereker, in their momentous mid- 
 night talk, "isn't there a particular thing of that sort, the 
 thing that most makes him apply himself, the thing with- 
 out the effort to achieve which he wouldn't write at all, 
 the very passion of his passion, the part of the business 
 in which, for him, the flame of art bums most intensely ? 
 Well, it's that!" And on a demand for more particularity 
 he adds, "There's an idea in my work without which I 
 wouldn't have given a straw for the whole job. It's the 
 finest fullest intention of the lot, and the application of it 
 has been, I think, a triumph of patience, of ingenuity. 
 ... It stretches, this little trick of mine, from book to 
 book, and everything else, comparatively, plays over the 
 surface of it. The order, the form, the texture of my 
 books will perhaps some day constitute for the initiated 
 a complete representation of it. So it's naturally the 
 thing for the critic to look for. It strikes me . . . even 
 as the thing for the critic to find." To the other's query, 
 "You call it a little trick?" the novelist replies, "That's 
 only my little modesty. It's really an exquisite scheme." 
 It is later that the critic hits on the figure of speech 
 by which this "little trick" is best to be described. "It 
 was something, I guessed, in the primal plan ; something 
 like a complex figure in a Persian carpet. He [Vereker] 
 highly approved of this image when I used it, and he 
 used another himself. 'It's the very string,' he said, 
 'that my pearls are strung on.' " 
 
 "It's naturally the thing for the critic to_,look for," 
 said Hugh Vereker of his "little trick." "It strikes me 
 even as the thing for the critic to find." What head is 
 cool enough to resist the suggestion that James had here 
 in mind his own well-nigh desperate case? Was there 
 not some "intention" of his own which had been regularly 
 
The Figure in the Carpet 14^ 
 
 overlooked by reviewers in their hasty mention of his 
 work? It was not that he wished to be difficult and 
 esoteric. It was not so at least with Hugh Vereker. 
 "If my great affair's a secret, that's only because it's a 
 secret in spite of itself — ^the amazing event has made it 
 one. I not only never took the smallest precaution to 
 keep it so, but never dreamed of any such accident. If I 
 had I shouldn't in advance have had the heart to go on. 
 As it was, I only became aware little by little, and mean- 
 while I had done my work." But now his secret had 
 become for him the great amusement of life. " 'I live 
 almost to see if it will ever be detected.' He looked 
 at me for a jesting challenge; something far within his 
 eyes seemed to peep out. 'But I needn't worry — it 
 won't !' " One cannot but wonder if Henry James, like 
 Hugh Vereker, did. pass away without ever having his 
 secret put adequately into words. 
 
 We need not take this tale too gravely as a revelation 
 of the artistic soul of Henry James. We need not set 
 ourselves, with confident assumption, to solve the hinted 
 riddle of his work. But we should be missing a rare 
 occasion if we did not take up this metaphor and let it 
 guide us in our summary of his art. Perhaps we should 
 say there is not one, there are many figures in the carpet, 
 — as many figures as there are fond, discerning readers^ 
 F or me the figure in the carpet is that which gives life 
 to th e whole woij c. It must be implied in all that we 
 have found to be true of it ; it must be the inner meaning 
 and the motive of all that is included in his method. 
 This too is suggested by what Hugh Vereker says of his 
 "secret." It is not a "kind of esoteric message" : at least 
 it cannot be adequately described "in cheap journalese." 
 He will not limit it by saying it is "something in the 
 style or something in the thought, an element of form or 
 
148 The Method of Henry James 
 
 an element of feeling." "Well," says Hugh Vereker, 
 "you've got a heart in your body. Is that an element of 
 form or an element of feeling? What I contend that 
 nobody has ever mentioned in my work is the organ of 
 life." 
 
 "Esoteric message" is "cheap journalese." The same 
 red lantern warns off from any statement of James's 
 "philosophy of life." It may be James has no philosophy 
 of life. But he has something which will serve the pur- 
 pose as well. He has a scale of values, a preference in 
 human experience, an absorbing preoccupation. From 
 _first to last he is preoccupied not with men's lives but 
 with the quality of their experience ; not with the pattern 
 but with the texture of life. Most novelists seem by 
 comparison all taken up with the pattern. In Fielding 
 and Scott, in Balzac and Zola, in Thackeray and Tolstoi, 
 it is the adventures of the characters that we are bidden 
 to follow. The contrast is the more remarkable when it is 
 the English contemporaries of James that are brought into 
 comparison. In Meredith and George Eliot, a matter 
 of prime importance is what the characters bring to pass 
 in a practical way. These authors may indeed reconcile 
 themselves to the littleness of accomplishment on the 
 part of their heroes; but it is accomplishment of some 
 sort on which heroes and authors alike are determined. 
 Meredith and George Eliot had both a philosophy of life. 
 They were both strongly imbued with perfectionist and 
 utilitarian ideals. They staked their all on the progress 
 and improvement of htunanity. A better world was the 
 cry they had taken up from the lips of Rousseau and 
 Voltaire, Bentham and Mill. The fact is deeply hidden 
 under romance and sentiment of the later day ; but George 
 Eliot and Meredith are still in the practical and mate- 
 rialist tradition, of, say, Benjamin Franklin. It is 
 
The Figure in the Carpet 149 
 
 another tradition, as we have seen, to which James owes 
 allegiance; an idealist tradition deriving ultimately from 
 romantic Germany and reaching its finest expression in 
 Wordsworth, Emerson and Hawthorne. Writing in the 
 time of Gladstone and Bernard Shaw, James seems hardlyj 
 to have given a thought to the political destinies of men 
 or to the practical consequences and bearings of personal 
 conduct. It is not in the relative terms of cause ancP 
 effect that he considers human action. He is content, 
 like some visionary Platonist, to refer each item of con- 
 duct to an absolute standard of the good and the beauti- 
 ful. This is one reason why he is so strange a figure in 
 our world all bent on getting results. We have, mostly, 
 no such absolute standards. We know nothing of any 
 Ideas in the mind of God. 
 
 In the stories of other writers, men and women are 
 shown us obsessed with desires and ambitions and 
 opposed by material difficulties. And our interest is 
 absorbed in the process by which they overcome their 
 difficulties and realize their desires. The characters of 
 James too have ambitions and desires. But that is not 
 the thing that strikes us most about them. What strikes 
 us most about them is their capac ity for re nunciation — 
 for giving up any pa rticular gratification in favor of some 
 fine ideal of co nduct with which it proves incompatible. 
 Com mon men a nd women have a more desperate grip 
 on material val ues. There are things they insist on hav- 
 ing. It may be money, or professional success, or social 
 position, or some person indispensable to their happiness. 
 And there is for them no immaterial substitute for these 
 substantial goods. There is nothing in thought or feeling 
 that can reconcile the lover to the loss of his mistress, 
 nothing he will prefer to the woman he has set his heart 
 upon. But the characters of James are not common men 
 
/JO The Method of Henry James 
 
 and women; and for the finest of them there is always 
 something of more account than the substance of their 
 experience, — namely, its quality. They may, like other 
 mortals, long for the realization of some particular desire ; 
 ibut they long still more fervently for the supreme com- 
 [fort of being right with themselves. We know what a 
 capacity for happiness was Isabel Archer's ; but we know 
 that happiness was far from being the thing she most 
 sought, and we know with what deliberation she chose to 
 embrace her fate, when she was once made aware of 
 "what most people know and suffer.". We are gratified 
 and appalled bv th e meekness with which these people 
 accept their dole of misery and deprivation, — ^this Mitchy 
 and Nanda, this C hristopher N ewman and Fleda Vetch. 
 It seems that we must not use words of unhappy connota- 
 tion to describe such exalted fervency of renunciation. 
 It is only because we ourselves require the objective 
 realization of our desires that we so misrepresent them. 
 They seem in point of fact to take some higher ground 
 inaccessible to our feet. They seem to say : Lo, we have 
 in not having. We were denied the shadow, but we have 
 always possessed the real substance. One fantastic crea- 
 ture even ventures to contend that, in the realm of art, 
 realization — concrete achievement — is inimical to the 
 true life of the soul. Gabriel Nash is actually afraid 
 Nick Dormer will prove a successful painter and so spoil 
 the beauty of his testimony to the artistic faith. He 
 prefers to "work in life" himself. Nick is so practical: 
 he wishes Gabriel "had more to show" for his "little 
 system." "Oh," says Gabriel, "having something to 
 show's such a poor business. It's a kind of confession 
 of failure."^ One does not need to measure one's acts 
 by their consequences. "One is one's self a fine 
 2 "The Tragic Muse," Vol. VII, p. 178. 
 
The Figure in the Carpet 151 
 
 consequence." * This is the very inner citadel of intran- 
 sigent idealism. On this system we may interpret the 
 story of Fleda Vetch as the triumph of Fleda. Let her 
 cover her face in sorrow as she will. Her vulgar rival 
 may have her lover, and the flames may have devoured 
 the Spoils. But somehow we are given to understand 
 that, of all the people in her world, she remains the 
 wealthiest. She remains in substantial possession of 
 beauty and of love. 
 
 What counts in the world of Tames is not the facts 
 themselves, — what one does or what happens to one," 
 but the interpretation put upon the facts. James has a 
 great fondness, especially in his tales, for subjects very 
 slight and off the common track of observation. There 
 is little in the circumstances themselves to attract 
 attention, and the people are, on the surface, entirely 
 wanting in romantic interest. The challenge is all the 
 greater to an author wh o prides himself oh seeing tefow 
 the Stiriace of human nature, who is like a naturalist 
 delighted to bring home flowers of rare and neglected 
 beauty from spots unnoted by vulgar eyes. Such a 
 flower was the homely American kinswoman of Lady 
 Beldonald, who was intended by that handsome woman 
 to be her foil, her dull and unremarked companion, and 
 who was declared by the portrait-painter to be as distin- 
 guished and "beautiful" as a Holbein. It is himself that 
 James describes in the words of the painter. "It's not my 1 
 fault," he says, "if I am so put together as often to find 
 more life in situations obscure and subject to interpreta- 1 
 tion than in the gross rattle of the foreground." This 
 note is forever recurring both in the stories themselves 
 and in the author's comment on them. We hear it in 
 Miriam Rooth's naive explanation to the great French 
 
 a "The Tragic Muse," Vol. VII, p. 33. 
 
152 The Method of Henry James 
 
 actress that "there were two kinds of scenes and speeches : 
 those which acted themselves, of which the treatment 
 was plain, the only way, so that you had just to take it; 
 and those open to interpretation, with which you had to 
 fight every step, rendering, arranging, doing the thing 
 according to your idea."* The note is sounded more 
 delicately and modestly in the case of Mrs. Blessing- 
 bourne and her romantic and at the same time Platonic 
 feeling for Colonel Voyt. That gentleman, who is in 
 full enjoyment of the love of another woman, is inchned 
 to regard such merely Platonic love as but thin material 
 for romance. But in his discussion of the matter with his 
 own mistress, he agrees that the pathetic lady's very 
 consciousness "was, in the last analysis, a kind of shy 
 romance. Not a romance like their own, a thing to make 
 the fortune of any author up to the mark . . . but a 
 small scared starved subjective satisfaction that would 
 do her no harm and nobody else any good."" We may 
 be sure it was not the creator of Fleda Vetch and Milly 
 Theale who is applying to Mrs. Blessingbourne's experi- 
 ence this supercilious description. As he says himself in 
 the preface, "The thing is, all beautifully, a matter of 
 interpretation and of the particular conditions ; without a 
 view of which latter some of the most prodigious adven- 
 tures, as one has often had occasion to say, may vulgarly 
 show for nothing."' 
 
 The same point is made still more significantly in refer- 
 ence to the "adventures" of Isabel Archer, which he 
 seems to think are but mild ones by the ordinary romantic 
 
 « "The Tragic Muse," Vol. VII, p. 194. 
 
 5 From "The Story in It," Vol. XVIII, pp. 434-435. 
 
 « Id., p. xxiii. The reader will pardon my quoting a second 
 time a sentence so illuminating; the first time was in the chapter 
 on "Idea." 
 
The Figure in the Carpet 153 
 
 measure. "Without her sense of them, her sense for 
 them, as one may say, they are next to nothing at all; 
 but isn't the beauty and the difficulty just in showing their 
 mystic conversion by that sense, conversion into the stuff 
 of drama or, even more delightful word still, of 'story' ?" 
 He vouchsafes two "very good instances of this effect 
 of conversion." One of them is 
 
 ... in the long statement, just beyond the middle of the 
 book, of my young woman's extraordinary meditative 
 vigil on the occasion that was to become for her such a 
 landmark. Reduced to its essence, it is but the vigil of 
 searching criticism ; but it throws the action further for- 
 ward than twenty "incidents" might have done. It was 
 designed to have all the vivacity of incident and all the 
 economy of picture. She sits up, by her dying fire, far 
 into the night, under the spell of recognitions on which 
 she finds the last sharpness suddenly wait. It is a repre- 
 sentation simply of her motionlessly seeing, and an 
 attempt withal to make the mere still lucidity of her act as 
 "interesting" as the surprise of a caravan or the identi- 
 fication of a pirate. It represents, for that matter, one of 
 the identifications dear to the novelist, and even indispen- 
 sable to him; but it all goes on without her being 
 approached by another person and without her leaving 
 her chair. It is obviously the best thing in the book, but 
 it is only a supreme illustration of the general plan.'' 
 
 If Mr. James qurer did trace out for us the Figure in 
 the Carpet, it was in this passage, in which, concluding 
 his review of the first book which really shows up the 
 figure with any distinctness, he lets us know what is 
 "obviously" the best thing in the book, and offers it to 
 us as "only a supreme illustration of the general plan." 
 We are reminded of the terms in which Hugh Vereker 
 adumbrates for his young friend the "exquisite scheme," 
 
 ^ Vol. Ill, pp. xx-xxi. 
 
154 The Method of Henry James 
 
 the "primal plan," not merely of his latest work, but of 
 the whole series of his novels. We are further reminded 
 of Hugh Vereker's attitude towards his public by Mr. 
 James's apologetic and somewhat exasperated remark — 
 it is in connection with his other instance of "the rare 
 chemistry" of the character's sense for her adventures — 
 "It is dreadful to have too much, for any artistic demon- 
 stration, to dot one's i's and insist on one's intentions, 
 and I am not eager to do it now." 
 
 But however reluctant, he felt obliged on this one occa- 
 sion to insist on his intentions. "The question here was 
 that of producing the maximum of intensity with the 
 minimum of strain. The interest was to be raised to 
 its pitch and yet the elements to be kept in their key; 
 so that, should the whole thing duly impress, I might 
 show what an 'exciting' inward life may do for the 
 person leading it even while it remains perfectly nor- 
 mal." « 
 
 "The Portrait of a Lady" was the first book in which 
 James plainly showed his "little trick," which he went on 
 showing more and more plainly from that time out. His 
 little trick was simply not to tell the "story" at all as the 
 story is told by the Scotts and the Maupassants, but to 
 give us instead the subjective accompaniment of the 
 story. His "exquisite scheme" was to confine himself 
 as nearly as possible to the "inward life" of his characters, 
 and yet to make it as "exciting" for his readers as it 
 was for the author, as exciting — ^were that possible — ^as 
 it was for the characters themselves. 
 
 Such an interpretation of his "scheme" would conform 
 very well, at any rate, to Hugh Vereker's comprehensive 
 description of his own : "It's the finest fullest intention of 
 the lot, and the application of it has been, I think, a tri- 
 
 8 Vol. Ill, p. XX. 
 
The Figure in the Carpet 155 
 
 umph of patience, of ingenuity. ... It stretches, this 
 little trick of mine, from book to book, and everything 
 else, comparatively, plays over the surface of it. The 
 order, the form, the texture of my books will perhaps 
 some day constitute for the initiated a complete repre- 
 sentation of it." I don't know how the scheme I have 
 indicated would be represented in the order of the books 
 of James. But it might serve as an explanation of their 
 form and texture, and of all the peculiarities of his 
 method as we have made them out. Naturally a book 
 devoted to the inward life of a group of people would be 
 nothing without its "idea." But t he strict limitation of 
 the act ion to the consci ousness of these people would 
 insure against tmdue abstractness in the idea, would [ 
 tra nsform I'fjf a '"tn "pj^nr" " The succession of inci- \ 
 dents in an ordinary story would in such a narrative be 
 rq)resented by the process of "revelation" of the picture. 
 S uspense- would have reference not to what might happen 
 but to the subjective reverberation of what happens. In a 
 record of inward life it is obvious how important must be 
 the choice and maintenance of a point of view. It is 
 almost absolutely essential that the cejatet-of interest 
 should be a person of penetr ating intelligence. It is plain 
 how this sub jecti ge.-bias would affect the nature of the 
 dialogue, making it less p ictures que, more fiiie-drawn 
 and "closej g ii t , being the record of mental exploration 
 carried on by several persons in concert. This is true of 
 the dialogue even in those more dramatic situations 
 involving tense oppositions of will, and gives its peculiar 
 character to the "drama" of James. The exclusi ve 
 interest in menta l^xplora tion explains to a large extent 
 the wholesale "eli minatio ns," which in turn relate them- 
 selves to the "neutr al tone".. Q£ James's writing. And 
 the almost complete abstraction from the world of com- 
 
1^6 The Method of Henry James 
 
 mon accident and circumstance, the confinement of atten- 
 tion to the reahn of spiritual reactions, gives to the work 
 of James its in substanti al, its romantic, even _f ant astic. 
 character, which makes it the scorn of the "general," the 
 despair of the conscientious, and the supreme entertain- 
 ment of those who like it. 
 
 Above all does the exclusive concern with the inward 
 life of his people explain the dominance of ethical con- 
 siderations and at the same time perhaps the peculiar 
 character of those involved. For the characters of James 
 the faculty of supreme importance is the intelligence, or 
 insight, the faculty of perceiving "values" beyond those 
 utilities upon which everyone agrees. Of such im- 
 material values there are two general groups, both of 
 great importance and of unfailing concern to the people 
 of James. The first group includes social and esthetic 
 values, which I class together because of their close 
 association in the characters' minds, and because of their 
 being on a common level as contrasted with the other 
 group of values, — the spiritual. 
 
 Minor classifications we must here ignore. We must 
 ignore those contrasts in social ideals which play so large 
 a part in the earlier stories of James, but which in the 
 long run prove to be of secondary importance. Social 
 ideals may appear on the surface to be relative; but at 
 bottom they show themselves, for this conservative phi- 
 losopher, as absolute as any Platonic Ideas. Tact and 
 discernment, fairness and modesty, the preference of 
 the fine to the vulgar, the instinct for the nice and the 
 proper, are after all traits in which practically all his 
 favored characters agree, whether they be of Albany 
 or London, Paris or "WooUett," "Flickerbridge" or 
 Rome. There is one notable instance in which the con- 
 trast is drawn between a sense for social and a sense 
 
The Figure in the Carpet 157 
 
 for esthetic values, The drama of "The Tragic Muse" 
 arises from the inability of JuHa Dallow, socially so 
 complete, to comprehend the esthetic life of Nick Dor- 
 mer; Nick Dormer is himself never quite able to make 
 up his mind whether so thoroughly artistic a spirit as 
 that of Gabriel Nash is capable of the refinements of 
 gentility ; and Peter Sherringham is in a similar perplex- 
 ity as regards the character of Miriam Rooth. Generally 
 however the social and the esthetic senses are inseparable 
 for the people of James. Mona Brigstock and her mother 
 are as incapable of the social as of the esthetic shibboleths 
 of Fleda Vetch and Mrs. Gereth. Isabel Archer receives 
 in one undivided flood her impressions of the esthetic 
 and the social qualities of Madame Merle and of Gilbert 
 Osmond. The world of refinements typified to Hyacinth 
 Robinson by the Princess Casamassima is a world in 
 which he cannot distinguish the esthetic from the social 
 felicities. So that, on the whole, we should be justified 
 in employing the hyphenated term of social-esthetic to 
 distinguish that type of intelligence which is shared by 
 practically all the important characters of James. Or 
 we might serve our purpose with the simpler, and equally 
 comprehensive, term, good taste. 
 
 There is at least one important character who is lack- 
 ing in good taste so understood. J mean Daisy Miller, 
 whose peculiarity lies in her possession of a rare spiritual 
 beauf^" quite unaccompanied by social tact and artistic 
 discernment. But Mr. James has expressed doubts him- 
 selTai^to the reality of this charming poetic creation; 
 and the one romantic exception will but make more nota- 
 ble the almost universal prevalence of good taste as a 
 qualification for admittance into the gallery of Henry 
 James. This is the first qualification, — that is, the one 
 first to be considered : one must successfully stand this 
 
158 The Method of Henry James 
 
 test before being advanced to the higher one reserved for 
 heroes and heroines. It is good taste which unites in one 
 great shining company the otherwise so various Gilbert 
 Osmond and Isabel Archer, Mrs. Brookenham and 
 Nanda, Kate Croy and Milly Theale, Chad Newsome 
 and Lambert Strether. 
 
 '''The ideal of James is clearly a combination, or rather 
 a ftision, of good taste with spiritual discernment, and 
 perhaps the most complete, if not the most dramatic, 
 instance of this fusion is the last named, Lambert 
 Strether. For hini there seems to be no such distinction 
 between esthetic and ethical as perplexes most of us 
 mortals. Madame de Vionnet has a claim upon Chad, 
 he thinks, because she has worked upon him so fine 
 a transformation; and this character of Chad's, of her 
 creation, is all described in terms of esthetic and social 
 connotation. No doubt the idea of an obligation is a 
 moral idea at bottom; but this obligation is in direct 
 opposition to the legal and religious code, and never were 
 greater pains taken to translate moral concept into the 
 language of simple good taste. In the mind of Lambert 
 Strether there seems to be no clear dividing line between 
 the categories of beauty and goodness. 
 
 Somewhat the same condition prevails in the psychol- 
 ogy of "The Awkward Age" ; and the tendency is always 
 in this direction in the stories of James. But in many 
 cases the distinction is much sharper between good taste 
 and the moral sense. And whenever the distinction 
 appears, the moral sense is clearly preferred as the 
 higher and rarer, and as something added to the other or 
 built upon it. Fleda Vetch is preferred to Mrs. Gereth 
 as being capable of spiritual discernment in addition to 
 possessing the mere good taste of which the latter is such 
 a miracle. We must do Mrs. Gereth the justice to 
 
The Figure in the Carpet 159 
 
 acknowledge that her devotion to the Spoils was an ideal 
 and unselfish devotion, altogether different from the 
 "crude love of possession," and that it gives a hint of 
 spiritual quality. But in any other and more human 
 connection, she was an unscrupulous because an unseeing 
 woman. "She had no imagination about anybody's life 
 save on the side she bumped against. Fleda was quite 
 aware that she would have otherwise been a rare crea- 
 ture, but a rare creature was originally just what she had 
 struck her as being. Mrs. Gereth had really no percep- 
 tion of anybody's nature — ^had only one question about 
 persons: were they clever or stupid? To be clever 
 meant to know the 'marks.' Fleda knew them by direct 
 inspiration, and a warm recognition of this had been 
 her friend's tribute to her character. The girl now had 
 hours of sombre hope she might never see anything 
 'good' again: that kind of experience was clearly so 
 broken a reed, so fallible a source of peace."® Owen 
 had no more sense for the "marks" than Mona or Mrs. 
 Brigstock ; but he was capable of rising to Fleda's spirit- 
 ual bait. And so we are given the impression of him as 
 really more clever than his mother, being in a class with 
 Fleda. And Mrs. Gereth comes to recognize Fleda and 
 Owen as "of quite another race and another flesh." " 
 
 So it is that Milly Theale is preferred to the superb and 
 socially incomparable Kate Croy ; that Mitchy and Nanda 
 are preferred to the infinitely clever and subtle mother 
 of Nanda ; that Isabel Archer is preferred to the charm-) 
 ing and accomplished Madame Merle and to Osmond, 
 who had both so long a start of her in social and esthetic 
 
 'Vol. X, p. 138. 
 " Id., p. 222. 
 
i6o The Method of Henry James 
 
 cultivation. In each case the one preferred has, in addi- 
 tion to the common good taste, the wit to distinguish 
 moral beauty. 
 
 It is all, as we have seen, a matter of insight. The 
 less favored characters, the false and the shady people, 
 are morally color-blind. It is always the same story 
 throughout the whole series of novels. It is so in 
 "Roderick Hudson" at the beginning and in "The Golden 
 Bowl" at the end. In "The Golden Bowl," it is a question 
 of whether the Prince Amerigo has enough discernment 
 to perceive the superiority of his wife to his accomplished 
 mistress. The "style" of Charlotte has indeed been 
 "great" in the closing scenes of the drama, but great 
 in a way far below the spiritual fineness of Maggie. 
 Maggie is "great" enough to perceive the greatness of 
 Charlotte. "Isn't she too splendid?" she asks her hus- 
 band. "That's our he|p, you see." . . . "See?" says 
 Amerigo, triumphantly meeting his final test, "I see noth- 
 ing but you." Roderick Hudson is an artist of genius, 
 with endowments infinitely superior to those of his friend 
 and benefactor in every respect except this of spiritual 
 discernment. It is only at the end of his life that he has 
 a glimpse of what he has missed. It is in his last con- 
 versation with Rowland, in which the latter has finally 
 told him of his own love for Mary. Roderick comes to 
 see how "hideous" is the appearance he has made. "Do 
 you really care," Rowland is prompted to ask, "for what 
 you may have appeared?" "Certainly. I've been dam- 
 nably stupid. Isn't an artist supposed to be a man of fine 
 perceptions? I haven't, as it turns out, had one."^^ 
 
 The stories of James are a continuous record of such 
 
 " Vol. I, p. 512. 
 
The Figure in the Carpet i6i 
 
 "fine perceptions" had or missed. The stuff is as airy as 
 gossamer : not at all 
 
 "Things done, that took the eye and had the price." 
 
 Hence the notorious difficulty and inaccessibility of 
 James. And hence the romantic exhilaration of his work 
 for so many denizens of a world in which the realization 
 of ideals is so rare and hard of accomplishment. May 
 this be the secret of his great following among women? 
 His greatest appeal is perhaps to those whose lives have 
 yielded the minimum of realization, to those who have the 
 least control over the gross materials of life. 
 
THE ART OF HENRY JAMES 
 PART TWO: TOWARDS A METHOD 
 
I 
 
 OBSCURE BEGINNINGS 
 
 Young writers who have had little success with their 
 first ventures may take comfort in the contemplation of 
 the early work of Henry James. He is one of those 
 writers of great distinction who have had a long road 
 to success. It is not that he had difficulty in placing his 
 early experiments in fiction. Some acquaintance with 
 editors gave him access very early to American maga- 
 zines of the best sort. Not merely did the "Nation" and 
 the "North American Review" make a regular practice 
 of printing his compact and competent critical reviews. 
 No less an organ than the "Atlantic Monthly" printed 
 over his signature story after story of much more doubt- 
 ful merit. Is it possible that the conductors of the great 
 "Atlantic" applied in the seventies less exacting tests to 
 candidates for publicity, or that we have been overesti- 
 mating the general quality of the literature produced in 
 those palmy days ? Or did they perhaps, with miraculous 
 insight, discover in these green shoots the promise of our 
 story-teller's rich maturity, and deliberately offer him 
 their pages for that public exhibition which is so needful 
 a step in hterary apprenticeship? There was doubtless 
 promise in these early tales; there was certainly very 
 mediocre performance. And most remarkable is the 
 contrast between these commonplace stories and the 
 mature work of an author who — whatever else may be 
 said of him — can hardly be denied the title of distinction. 
 For the length of nearly two decades, at least, his path 
 is strewn with the remains of feeble and abortive experi- 
 ment. 
 
i66 The Method of Henry James 
 
 If in this chapter I dwell more than elsewhere in my 
 study upon the tales, it is because they were his very 
 earliest work. Mr. James was later well aware of the 
 quality of this early work; and he took some pains to 
 cover his tracks. In the years 1907 to 1909 appeared the 
 "New York" edition of his novels and tales, in whicht- 
 he established the canon of his works of fiction. Most 
 of his earlier tales, as well as one full-fledged novel, were 
 designedly shut out from this company of his cherished 
 offspring. Half of the earlier tales had never even 
 appeared in book form; and most of the rest languish 
 still in the oblivion of rare and little-sought volumes. It 
 is only the curious historian, bent on tracing the path of 
 genius, who does him the doubtful service of bringing 
 to light these repudiated children of his brain. And the 
 present historian will make as brief as possible the ear- 
 liest chapter of this chronicle, that dealing with the 
 twenty-five tales and the one novel published before the 
 year 1875. Not all the tales, nor by any means all the 
 novels, produced since 1875 were included in the New 
 York edition. But after that date we may say the author 
 had struck some kind of a gait, and what he produced in 
 this middle period can never be dismissed without more 
 careful scrutiny. The very crudeness of the early stories, 
 however, gives them some title to consideration in any 
 analytic study. What was the matter with these stories? 
 In what respects do they fall short of the author's notion 
 of a good story ? 
 
 A curious circumstance meets us at the start. If we 
 divide his tales into two groups of "realistic" and "roman- 
 tic," we instantly observe that it was in the romantic 
 tales that James first struck his vein. I suppose one 
 would naturally apply the term realistic to the best-known 
 work of Henry James. At any rate he will hardly be 
 
Obscure Beginnings i6f 
 
 thought of as a romantic story-teller in the ordinary 
 sense. And yet the first of all his tales to merit admission 
 to the canon were the distinctly romantic stories, "A 
 Passionate Pilgrim" and "The Madonna of the Future." 
 The first tale of a soberer cast thus to be honored is 
 "Madame de Mauves," which appeared just before "Rod- 
 erick Hudson." One significant fact here stares us in 
 the face. The first stories good enough for the collective 
 edition were all laid in Europe. A glance at the New 
 York edition will furnish the correlative fact that, of all 
 the novels and tales included in its twenty-four volumes, 
 not half a dozen are laid in the native land of Henry 
 James.^ And one further observation will complete our 
 enlightenment. In every one of the realistic tales pre- 
 ceding "Madame de Mauves," the story is laid in the 
 United States ; and this is true of four out of five of all 
 the novels up to 1886 excluded from the canon. If it 
 was in romance that the young author first found himself, 
 it was because in romance he first found himself in the 
 old world. 
 
 At first blush one might be inclined to indict Mr. James 
 for want of patriotism, thus to repudiate his distinctively 
 American stories. Can it be that — ^in contrast to one of 
 his characters — ^he had never felt "certain natural, filial 
 longings for this dear American mother of us all"?^ 
 Such an impression will be at once dispelled by the read- 
 ing of Mr. James's reminiscences of his youth, in which 
 he recalls with such fondness his life in New York and 
 Newport, Cambridge and Boston, during the intervals 
 of the family's foreign sojourn. His passion for "Eu- 
 
 iThis does not include stories, like "Roderick Hudson," in 
 which the scene is American for a very small part of the whole 
 narrative. 
 
 2 From "A Light Man," in "The Galaxy," July, 1869. 
 
i68 The Method of Henry James 
 
 rope" seems always to have left room in his heart for 
 a strong, if not uncritical love of his native land. And 
 second thought will lead us to exclaim : What great sacri- 
 fices he did make on the altar of patriotism! Unless, 
 after all, we had better say, on the altar of realism ! For 
 I fancy the poor man ridden in the early years with a 
 notion that telling the truth in fiction means telling the 
 truth about your own people "located" (as Americans 
 say) on your own familiar heath. How could he dis- 
 regard the examples of Balzac and George Eliot and 
 Turgenieff ? And so he kept up for years the bootless 
 effort to make stories of Americans in New York and 
 Boston, in Newport and Sharon Springs. As late as 
 1885 he was still cultivating the forlorn hope with "The 
 Bostonians." That was his last attack in force.* And 
 a touching tribute it was to his New England conscience. 
 The main reason for James's failure to make anything 
 of "the American scene" is obvious enough to anyone 
 familiar with his most characteristic work. If his central 
 figures are likely to be women of a certain beautiful clear 
 simplicity of soul, his backgrounds, as we have seen, are 
 even more likely to consist in a social order full of 
 sophistications and complexities, giving the effect of a 
 darker and more troubled coloring. If his ethics are 
 transcendental New England, his manners are social 
 Europe. But if he can sometimes find the right ethics 
 in the old world, he can never find the manners any- 
 where else. If his central figure is most often American, 
 his background must be invariably European. And the 
 background is in the stories of Henry James as dominant 
 in the final effect as the harmonic background in a song 
 
 3 Unless we take into account "The Ivory Tower," left un- 
 finished at his death, and published posthumously, the scene of 
 which is laid in Newport. 
 
Obscure Beginnings i6p 
 
 of Debussy. The melody itself is transformed by the 
 magic of harmonization. The developed art of James is 
 greatly an affair of relationships and adjustments, of 
 carefully disposed lights and qualified shadows, of nice 
 gradations and subtle intimations. Mr. James often tells 
 us how fond he is of "thickened motive and accumulated 
 character." He likes to deal with situations in which 
 action and motive are much aifected by the pressure of 
 convention, by traditions and points of view implying 
 a long-established, deep-rooted, widely ramifying society. 
 He finds more for explication and representation in the 
 refinements and indirections of a somewhat decadenn 
 order than in the brusque downrightness of social 
 pioneers. All this implies a longer cultivation of the arts 
 of leisure, a longer familiarity with the fruits of social 
 privilege, than could be found in his Boston, where 
 culture was so largely literary and foreign in its refer- 
 ence, in his Albany and New York, where — as he tells 
 us in "A Small Boy" — ^a young man had no alternative 
 to the cotmting-house but a short life of cheap dissipation. 
 This European background was prized both as physical 
 setting and as social milieu. For many readers the 
 interest of these stories is to a very large extent the 
 interest of Paris and London, of Venice and Rome. Of 
 course, in the simplest material way, the parks and monu- 
 ments, the drawing-rooms and country houses of Europe 
 contribute an element of the splendid and sumptuous, 
 as the titles of Lord and Princess lend their glitter to the 
 social effect. When Nick Dormer and Julia Dallow take 
 their bocks in the open air of Paris, we note that "beyond 
 the Boulevard des Capucines [the city] flared through 
 the warm evening like a vast bazaar, and opposite the 
 Cafe Durand the Madeleine rose theatrical, a high artful 
 decor before the footlights of the Rue Royale." When 
 
170 The Method of Henry James 
 
 Milly Theale comes abroad to make what she can of the 
 few brief moments of her life, she must needs com- 
 mandeer a Venetian palace for the scene of her inter- 
 national drama. The dark domestic struggle of Maggie 
 Verver is spaciously enacted in the gardens and along 
 the terraces at Fawns; and her terrible quiet encounter 
 with Charlotte takes place in the midst of the grand 
 drawing-room "under the old lustres of Venice and the 
 eyes of several great portraits more or less contemporary 
 with these." When the other members of the party 
 arrive "at the open door at the end of the room" to 
 witness the "prodigious kiss" with which the interview 
 is sealed, we cannot fail to realize the scene as one 
 mounted handsomely upon a stage of regal distances. 
 One is struck on review with the large number of in- 
 stances in which we have to do with precious works 
 of art like Mr. Verver's collections and the "old things" 
 of Poynton, as well as the more modest furniture of 
 Gilbert Osmond and Chad Newsome, of Edward Rosier 
 and even Maria Gostrey. Even the socialist Hyacinth 
 Robinson was gradually reconciled to an order of things 
 which had made possible so great an accumulation of 
 beauty. And the prime element in the beauty of things 
 -European is that "tone of time" which was so rarely 
 felt by James in connection with anything American.* 
 ~ But however seductive the European settings in a 
 physical way, it is the social milieu that is most indis- 
 pensable to the logic of the story. It was quite as much 
 in the social order itself that Hyacinth Robinson felt 
 the beautifying effect of the tone of time. It was there 
 above all that he and his creator found that high order- 
 liness and convenience enjoyed at least by the privileged 
 
 * It is, to be sure, of old New York society that the phrase is 
 used in the tale of "Crapy Cornelia," in "The Finer Grain." 
 
Obscure Beginnings 171 
 
 few. The social order in Europe was actually an order. 
 It had long since taken on its recognizable forms. It 
 was therefore so much found for the painter of life in the 
 way of arrangement, pattern, composition. And for the 
 painter of social life, it was pre-eminently a social order. 
 The characters of Henry James are never naked souls 
 meeting in some uncharted realm of romance. They 
 are social beings locally conditioned and very much 
 clothed. And it is not in khaki and broad-brimmed hats 
 and the riding-boots of the "greaser" that they are 
 clothed. It is in the discreet and conventional, if often 
 shining, garb of the tea table and the dining room. The 
 kind of relationships in which they are involved are only 
 such as can be maintained in connection with the normal 
 contacts of organized and, to use a very up-to-date term, 
 of standardized society. Everybody has been delighted 
 with certam refreshing scenes in George Meredith, — 
 the scene in which one heroine is discovered as a "hag- 
 gard Venus" perched on some inaccessible crag of the 
 Alps, the scene in which an athletic hero and heroine 
 plight their unconventional troth beneath the waters of 
 the Atlantic. Such things are impossible to the less vivid 
 creatures of our American novelist. These persons 
 never dream of any excursion beyond the strict bounds 
 of social etiquette. The very air they breathe — from 
 the moment they get to Europe — is the purged and 
 walled-in air of the bienseances. They are creatures 
 of a system in which everything is done decently and in 
 order. They would be quite lost without the smooth<»j 
 running social machin e which carries them so securely^ 
 through their day of morning calls and afternoon teas. 
 
 It was long before James could bring himself to make 
 an acknowledgmfent so wanting in filial piety. He hated 
 no doubt to confess himself beaten on his own ground. 
 
ijs The Method of Henry James 
 
 And then he had not yet really made out his formula. 
 But all the while the truth was there before his troubled 
 eyes: the settings that he needed were not to be found 
 at home. Our sun is too fierce and bright, our shadows 
 too wanting in richness and mystery, for the purposes 
 of his fine brush. Our society was too crude and un- 
 formed, our tongue untutored. There was here no drift 
 of centuries. There was no elegant and cultivated leisure. 
 It might all be symbolized by the institution of five 
 o'clock tea. In one of his latest tales, James represents 
 a poor English tradesman as having his first personal 
 introduction to this custom "known to him only by the 
 contemporary novel of manners and the catchy adver- 
 tisements of table linen."" What should our author do 
 without the aid of this "luxurious rite," as essential to the 
 unfolding of his story as are the morning visits and 
 country balls for Jane Austen ? Well, in the sixties and 
 seventies there seems to have been, in Albany and Boston 
 and Northampton, a singular scantiness in the provision 
 of five o'clock tea. 
 
 And so the young author, obstinately insisting on 
 patriotic realism, had resort to most heroic means for 
 supplying the want. He will strike through to what lies 
 below convention, and will lay bare the depths of human 
 souls. Perhaps the most constant cause of his failure 
 in these earlier tales is the overweening audacity of this 
 heroism. He is writing clearly in the spirit of George 
 Eliot. He seems to say to himself : go to ! let us give an 
 account of human nature, its strength and weakness. Let 
 us take the plainest of types, those that fall most natur- 
 ally tmder our observation. That will be a modest under- 
 
 «From "The Bench of Desolation," in "The Finer Grain," 
 p. 274. 
 
Obscure Beginnings 173 
 
 taking, he seems to think; but he will shirk none of his 
 responsibilities for the character of his people. The first 
 of his tales, dating from 1865, is "The Story of a Year."" 
 It is devoted to the soul of a New England country girl 
 engaged to a soldier at the front. She is a well-meaning 
 creature, but unequal to the strain put on her loyalty 
 by the long absence of her betrothed. She carries on 
 a harmless flirtation with a prepossessing young man 
 from a neighboring town ; and to him she falls in the end, 
 with the benison of her soldier-lover brought back from 
 the war mortally wounded. Her lover judges the girl 
 more kindly than does his mother, — a hard, devoted 
 farmer's wife who knows the difference between a stead- 
 fast soul and a flirt. ... It is, you may say, a simple, 
 unambitious theme. . . . Too simple to be unambitious ! 
 Such homespun can be given distinction only by the cut. 
 The author has no alternative. He must interest us in 
 the soul of his girl; he must display with convincing 
 truth her processes of thought. The latter obligation he 
 takes most seriously, paying us with paragraphs of grave 
 analysis in the tone of George Eliot. And yet somehow 
 he fails to interest us very deeply in the soul of this most 
 ordinary girl. She is no Maggie Tulliver, no Hetty 
 Sorrel. This is realism of a rigor, as if the author 
 had bound himself by some self-denying ordinance. 
 
 In "Master Eustace"^ the author allows himself more 
 rope, and gives us more for our money. For he 
 provides here the more sensational theme of parentage 
 unknown and revealed at the crisis of the action; and 
 it is a tale of secret sin and loud-voiced passion. In all 
 this one would hardly recognize the James of later years. 
 But the main emphasis is laid on the development of an 
 
 8 In "The Atlantic," March, 1865. 
 7 "The Galaxy," October, 1871. 
 
174 The Method of Henry James 
 
 ugly character in a spoiled child. It is that character- 
 development to which the author feels his deepest obliga- 
 tion. And this, in its unmodified banality, is equally out 
 of the familiar range of the master's art. 
 
 It is impossible to say why a given character lives. 
 It is often easier to make out why such another fails 
 to come to life, — why such a story remains a shapeless 
 heap of matter without animation. And in these early 
 tales of James we are at once struck, for one thing, with 
 his reckless prodigality of matter. His early tales are 
 generally novels in little, "tabloid" novels. James never 
 indeed conceived the short story in the same rigorous 
 fashion as Kipling or Maupassant or their disciples. And 
 yet, in his later work, the tale — or the nouvelle, as he 
 likes to call his favorite length of short story — is dis- 
 tinguished from the novel by the amount and magnitude 
 of what it undertakes. The novel grapples with the 
 central facts of the lives of several persons: it involves 
 a full and rounded development of their characters, a 
 considerable survey of their careers, and a leisurely indi- 
 cation of the accessories in the way of secondary charac- 
 ters and milieu. Whether or not covering a long course 
 of years, it takes into account a large number of scenes, 
 each one of which is to be treated at length. The tale 
 is likely to concern itself with less central, less monu- 
 mental situations, — rather with detachable bits and phases 
 of a life. Few of the characters are to be developed, and 
 these generally only on one or two sides. The action 
 is likely to be confined to a short period, and within this 
 period to a carefully limited number of occasions. 
 James was very proud of his expertness in turning round 
 — as he describes the performance — in so small a space 
 as he allows himself. This he accomplishes by virtue 
 
Obscure Beginnings 175 
 
 of the most strict economy, by all sorts of tricks of fore- 
 shortening and suggestion. 
 
 In the early tales, however, he shows no sign of such 
 expertness. Indeed he seems unaware of the need of it. 
 He conceives a plot big enough for a novel, and disposes 
 of it within the compass of a very short story. He sets 
 out bravely to tell us all about a set of persons; and it 
 must puzzle him to find how soon it is done. Economy 
 is the last thing that seems necessary, especially in the 
 matter of characterization. Every tale begins with a long 
 account of the characters ; or if, by happier inspiration, 
 we are treated first to a bit of incident or dialogue, we 
 are soon halted for some lengthy ex planation about the 
 p articipants^ Thus in "Poor Kichara, "° tne author per- 
 mits himself a page or two of conversation near the 
 beginning, only to pull himself up shortly with the follow- 
 ing remark : "To appreciate the importance of this con- 
 versation, the reader must know that Miss Gertrude 
 Whittaker was a young woman of four-and-twenty, 
 whose father, recently deceased, had left her alone in the 
 world, with a great fortune, accumulated by various 
 enterprises in that part of the State. He had appointed 
 a distant and elderly kinswoman, by name Miss Pen- 
 dexter [who never again puts her nose intp the story], 
 as his daughter's household companion ; and an old friend 
 of his own, known to combine shrewdness with integrity 
 f a person equally alipn fn f^" g<^"<7| as her financial 
 adviser. Motherless, country-bred and homely featured, 
 Gertrude on arriving at maturity had neither the tastes 
 nor the manners of a fine lady. Of robust and active 
 make, with a warm heart, a cool head, and a very pretty 
 talent for affairs, she was, in virtue both of her wealth 
 and her tact, one of the chief figures of the neighbor- 
 
 8 In "The Atlantic," June- August, 1867. 
 
1^6 The Method of Henry James 
 
 hood." And a long paragraph is devoted to the further 
 account of this lady's character and situation ; then several 
 columns to the character and history of the two men who 
 are to be rivals for her affections. We should now be 
 thoroughly documented, thoroughly acquainted with these 
 persons. Instead of that we are just tired. We are 
 oppressed with the mere weight of undigested informa- 
 tion. We have been given too much and too little. We 
 have listened to so many general statements unilluminated 
 by reference to any particular occasion that we have quite 
 lost the sense of reading a story or making the acquaint- 
 ance of interesting people. In the later stories, whether 
 long or short, we make acquaintance by more gradual 
 and more human degrees. We are asked merely to 
 observe people in action ; we are not expected to swallow 
 the complete formula of their character. We are left 
 to draw our inferences from the gesture, physical or 
 mental, with which they greet the words and acts of their 
 companions. And so we have the impression of story 
 or drama, and feel ourselves agreeably entertained. And 
 whatever we do learn about these people is well learned, 
 being a part not of our information but of our very 
 feeling about them. 
 
 A similar pitfall yawns for the young experimenter 
 in the number of scenes treated. Again he is generous 
 in his offering. And again the ungrateful reader com- 
 plains of there being at once too much and too little. 
 There are far too many scenes, and no one of them is 
 adequately developed. They are not so much actual 
 scenes as notes for scenes, abstracts, — making up together 
 a good preliminary sketch or scenario of play or novel. 
 
 Even at this early period James was groping his way 
 towards the sort of themes which occupied him later. 
 But he had not hit upon the technique suited to their 
 
Obscure Beginnings 177 
 
 development. "My Friend Bingham,"* for example, is 
 the story of a man who has accidentally shot the only 
 child of a poor widowed woman. He is filled with 
 remorseful compassion, and she on her side is large 
 minded enough to feel compassion rather than resent- 
 ment towards him. And out of their mutual pity grow 
 esteem and love. So freakish are the ways of feeling. 
 It is a pretty psychological problem, and in conception 
 not unworthy of its distinguished author. But the story 
 is told in so bald and summary a fashion that he would 
 be the first to say it is practically not told at all. It con- 
 sists of nine distinct scenes, exclusive of the long intro- 
 ductory account of "my friend Bingham" and of "my" 
 relations with him; and the whole history is disposed 
 of in thirteen pages of the "Atlantic"! The all-impor- 
 tant matter in this story is naturally the attitude of 
 Bingham towards Mrs. Hicks and her attitude towards 
 him; and in the later years these attitudes would have 
 been indicated with great fineness and at some length 
 in the course of their several meetings. In this tale, but 
 three of the nine scenes are devoted to these meetings, 
 and they are disposed of with amazing brevity. The final 
 scene records an agreement to marry on the part of these 
 two persons in the presence of the narrator. But most 
 summary is the account of how they looked, what they 
 thought and what they said on this occasion. The author 
 seems indeed to have had an uneasy sense that something 
 is wanting to the success of his story, and he tries to cut 
 the Grfirdian knot with one slashing stroke. "What honest 
 George Bingham said, what I said, is of little account. 
 The proper conclusion of my story lies in the highly 
 dramatic fact that out of the depths of her bereavement — 
 out of her loneliness and her pity — ^this richly gifted 
 9 "The Atlantic," March, 1867. 
 
if8 The Method of Henry James 
 
 woman had emerged, responsive to the passion of him 
 who had wronged her all but as deeply as he loved her." 
 
 Which is as much as to say : here is my story in one 
 sentence — what is the use of stringing it out ? As if the 
 abstract idea of a story were the story itself, in all its 
 concrete embodiment, all its wealth of convincing cir- 
 cumstance. In later years the author came to realize 
 only too well, some feel, what is involved in the art 
 of representation. He is able to judge even so masterly 
 a performance as "The Tragic Muse," and say of certain 
 parts of that story: "The whole of [this], as the book 
 gives it, is too rapid and sudden . . . : processes, periods, 
 intervals, stages, degrees, connexions, may be easily 
 enough and barely enough named, may be unconvincingly 
 stated, in fiction, to the deep discredit of the writer, but 
 it remains the very deuce to represent them . . . ; and 
 this even though the novelist who doesn't represent, and 
 represent 'all the time,' is lost."" In "My Friend Bing- 
 ham" and the other early tales, he seldom dreams of 
 representing his periods and stages. He feels it suffi- 
 cient to tell us, of certain psychological processes: this 
 is what happened; with no effort to indicate, to make 
 palpable, the degrees by which it came about. The differ- 
 ence is not that between the novel and the short story. 
 In extreme contrast to the method of these early tales 
 is that of tales in the latest volumes, such, for example, 
 as "The Bench of Desolation" in "The Finer Grain." 
 In that story we assist at the gradual process by which 
 a man and a woman, long estranged, come at last to a 
 mutual understanding and to the same relationship as that 
 reached by George Bingham and Mrs. Hicks. But there 
 we follow in minute detail the largely wordless tug-of- 
 war between the two parties, the final result of which is 
 
 10 Vol. VII, p. xix. ' 
 
Obscure Beginnings 179 
 
 that each one, while maintaining his own particular 
 dignity and advantage, yet manages to yield to what 
 proves their common interest. The author, in conducting 
 his story to this conclusion, lets us lose no single drop 
 of the feeling — at least of the man, from whose point 
 of view the narrative is given — with which these manoeu- 
 vres are accompanied. 
 
 Not all readers are equally fond of this manner of 
 story-telling; and some will simply scorn this art as an 
 art not worth mastering. They must at least grant that 
 in such work the author does not fail for want of develop- 
 ing the latent possibilities of the scene on the side of 
 psychology. They will not deny its distinctive quality. 
 And that is more than can be predicated of the flavorless 
 tales of the prentice period. One source of weakne ss 
 in the early tales closely related to tnat we have been 
 discussing is the want of attention to the point of view. 
 In the first ten of these tales (with one exception), the 
 author had no better inspiration than to offer us his own j 
 omniscient '^iirvfj '?f the action. This means there is 
 no point of view at all steadily maintained. In the later 
 years of this period, he was making some feeble experi- 
 ments towards a more effective method, often employing 
 the device of an interested observer who tells the story 
 in the first person. But in all these prentice years little 
 is gained by this device, owing to the author's want of 
 realization of what should or might come within the field 
 of observation of his chosen story-teller. Sometimes, 
 as in "My Friend Bingham," he fails to choose the person 
 best fitted to follow the action, or he fails to select and 
 develop those scenes in which his observation might serve 
 best to illuminate it. Sometimes, as in "Master 
 Eustace," he simply transfers to the person who tells 
 the story his own editorial omniscience, thus by one 
 
i8o The Method of Henry James 
 
 stroke sacrificing the technical advantages of his method. 
 In one tale, "A Light Man," he tried the interesting ex- 
 periment of having a person of mean and frivolous 
 character betray himself in the confidence of his diary. 
 So desperate a venture he never made a second time, 
 so far as I can remember, even at the height of his 
 cunning. 
 
 In none of the earlier tales, again, is the limited point 
 of view made use of for developing the sort of suspense 
 that makes the great charm of the later narratives as 
 stories. Even where the narrative is given by an observer 
 in the first person, he begins by telling you more than 
 anyone ought to know at the start. The result is a 
 complete absence of that mystery, that teasing bewilder- 
 ment, with which he baits his readers in his later work. 
 
 \ And as a corollary to this, we observe the comparative 
 commonplaceness of the characters themselves. As we 
 have seen, the great aim of Henry James came to be 
 the treatment of subjects off the beaten track of observa- 
 tion, sub jects vitally dependent for effectiveness upon 
 int erpret ation. The obvious, the ordinary in character 
 
 \and situation was what he must at all costs avoid. How- 
 ever crude the material, it must be given some particular 
 turn, so me special re finement ; it must be viewed in some 
 important but neglected aspect. In the light of his later 
 work, one may indeed detect in the earliest some reach- 
 ing out for this kind of subject. But never does the 
 young author wholly succeed in avoiding the effect of the 
 ordinary. His experience of life is too limited, his obser- 
 vation too little cultivated, his imagination too timid and 
 unresourceful. His subjects are largely young people, 
 their tentative and generic loves. Of the complexities 
 of the social order, of the manifold shapes assumed by 
 character in its adaptation to circumstance, of the ingen- 
 
Obscure Beginnings i8i 
 
 ious shifts by which thwarted men and women endeavor 
 to give their Uves some special distinction, the youthful 
 James has little knowledge. And by the same token he has 
 little acquaintance with the artful tricks of speech by 
 which clever people display and conceal their feelings, and 
 with the help of which they grope their way to an under- 
 standing of where they are. He has not learned, for 
 himself, that lightness of touch which invariably charac- 
 terizes his later style. He has not learned to convey his 
 meaning by allusive indirection. It goes without saying' 
 that his earliest style has no hint of that beautiful tex- 
 ture, that suffused glow and shimmer of figurative lan- 
 guage, which makes so much of the charm of books like 
 "The Princess Casamassima" and "The Wings of the 
 Dove." He has a copiou g vocabulary, the young author ; 
 but of the suppleness, the grasp of the minor relationships 
 of ideas, the faculCleS' for intimation and qualification 
 of the later Ja»ie!J, {JlS rcely a hint. The dialogue in 
 particular impresses one as bald and plain to the point 
 of boredom. All this I must ask the reader to take for 
 granted, especially in reference to the realistic tales, of 
 which thus far I have been speaking more particularly. 
 
 It is all equally true of his first little experiment in 
 the longer form of story, "Watch and Ward," which 
 appeared in the "Atlantic" in 1871, and was later accorded 
 the dignity of a volume to itself. In this book we have 
 to do with most ordinary people involved in a most ordi- 
 nary plot. It is about a nice youijg man of means who, 
 having adopted an orphan girl, proceeds to fall in love 
 with his ward while she is yet very young. There can be 
 little question that in the en^ she will become his wife ; 
 but a story is rigged up by the usual expedient of devising 
 various obstacles to that desired consummation. These 
 
i82 The Method of Henry James 
 
 obstacles take the form of several women and several 
 men. The women make a very weak trial of the con- 
 stancy of our hero; the men, who are disposed of with 
 greater difficulty, serve as steps in the education of our 
 heroine to the point where she can choose her guardian 
 with a full imderstanding of his merits. There are four 
 or five major characters, and many others of minor im- 
 portance. The incidents include a suicide, a voyage to 
 South America, another to Rome, and what practically 
 constitutes the abduction and forcible confinement of the 
 heroine; as well as several "scenes" of considerable ex- 
 citement in which emphatic words are spoken. And it 
 is all disposed of in eleven short chapters. Something 
 important happens in each chapter. And yet the effect 
 is of matter spread out thin, since no scene is developed 
 according to its possibilities. The people are introduced 
 to us in extended passages of set description, and yet we 
 have no feeling of intimate acquaintance with any of 
 them. They include a corrupt and plausible Episcopal 
 minister of high fashion, whose more distinguished kin 
 we seem to have met in the pages of Thackeray and 
 Trollope ; a flashy young man from St. Louis ; a slovenly 
 and ignorant Peruvian beauty; and several colorless 
 though nominally attractive women of our own clime. 
 Among the incidental figures, are several suggestive of 
 those tobacco-spitting Americans encountered by Martin 
 Chuzzlewit on his trip to Eden. 
 
 Both persons and places offered frequent occasion for 
 testifying to a realistic faith in which by some miracle 
 Dickens and Balzac might be reconciled. We read of a 
 certain Mr. Franks, that he "was a small meagre man, 
 with a whitish coloring, weak blue eyes and thin yellow 
 whiskers, suffering apparently from some nervous 
 malady. He nodded, he stumbled, he jerked his arms 
 
Obscure Beginnings 183 
 
 and legs about with pitiful comicality. He had a large 
 protuberant forehead, such a forehead as would have 
 done honor to a Goethe or a Newton."^^ The personality 
 of Mr. Franks, we may note in passing, has but the 
 remotest bearing on the story, and he makes his appear- 
 ance only in this one brief scene. 
 
 The dialogue is crude and bald without intending to be 
 so. The following is the style of the accomplished 
 clerical Lothario on being reproached by a lady with his 
 double-dealing. He "remained silent a moment, shaking 
 a scornful finger at her. 'For shame, Madam,' he cried. 
 'That's in shocking taste ! You might have been gener- 
 ous ; it seems to me I deserve it.' And with a summary 
 bow he departed."^'' Imagine a character of Henry 
 James shaking a scornful finger and crying "For shame, 
 Madam"! Hardly more recognizable is the style when 
 the young author introduces some original reflection of 
 his own. "So she played Weber for more than an hour," 
 runs the account in one moving passage; "and I doubt 
 whether, among the singers who filled the theatre with 
 their melody, the master found that evening a truer 
 interpreter than the young girl playing in the lamplit 
 parlor to the man she loved."" In 1871 prevailed, we 
 remember, the undegenerate style of our grandmothers. 
 
 But this is like watching someone in the act of dress- 
 ing. We have stayed our glance too long on a work 
 which the author would doubtless have blotted out of 
 existence had that been possible. 
 
 A considerable advance in expertness is to be observed 
 in the romantic tales. This may be to some extent the 
 result of their later date. It was charily and with seem- 
 
 11 P. 178. 12 p. 156. 18 p. 144. 
 
The Method of Henry James 
 
 ing reluctance that James ventured upon this dubious 
 ground, as if he felt it not to be his realm, and was yet 
 unwilling to leave any possibility untried. And there 
 were but two of this miscellaneous group of tales written 
 before 1875 that he saw fit to revive in later years. The 
 reasons are not generally far to seek. 
 
 He first tried his hand at the supernatural, and most 
 amateurish is his handling of this weird element. Of 
 "The Romance of Certain Old Clothes"^* the inspiration 
 is clearly Hawthorne. The occurrences are referred 
 to eighteenth-century New England. But the strictly 
 romantic element is confined to the last paragraph, where 
 the red marks of the ghostly fingers are not more sur- 
 prising than they are out of place artistically. The story 
 was written for the sake of the conclusion, but the con- 
 clusion gives the impression of not belonging to the story. 
 "DeGrey: A Romance,"^" while it devotes itself more at 
 length to the creation of effects of mystery and terror, 
 shows yet an uncertainty on the author's part as to 
 whether these thrills are to be his main concern, or 
 whether it is not to be rather the psychological processes 
 of the characters. As for the thrills themselves, they are 
 created rather cheaply with a plot involving a family 
 in which invariably the mistress or wife comes to a quick 
 and terrible end. And the author makes use also of the 
 familiar devices of melodramatic phrase and circum- 
 stance. There must needs be a Catholic priest with a 
 mysterious past to reveal the fearful secrets of the family 
 to the heroine in the midst of a thunderstorm. "The 
 room grew dark with the gathering storm, and the distant 
 thunder muttered." Feeling and expression are always 
 in the superlative degree. The hero "cries out in an 
 
 1* "The Atlantic," February, 1868. 
 « "The Atlantic," July, 1868. 
 
Obscure Beginnings 185 
 
 ecstasy of belief and joy." The heroine "turns deadly 
 pale." People rush madly, precipitately — and more than 
 once. Piercing shrieks resound through the house. A 
 face "gleams through the darkness like a mask of 
 reproach, white with the phosphorescent dews of death." 
 
 Neither of these tales of the uncanny, nor for that 
 matter the much better story of "The Ghostly Rental," 
 dating from as late as 1876," bears the faintest resem- 
 blance to those remarkable tales of the later time, "The 
 Friends of the Friends," "The Real Right Thing," and 
 "The Turn of the Screw." The last-named is almost 
 unparalleled in its effects of supernatural terror secured 
 without any resort to the devices of twilight fears and 
 bugbear phrases. But true to the genius of Henry James, 
 it is a moral terror as well as a thrill of the nerves. 
 
 And now we take a long step forward. We turn our 
 backs on the American scene. And the romantic glamour 
 of Europe must count for something in all the rest 
 of the experiments. Some of them, however, owe their 
 romantic character not so much to that circumstance 
 as to the remarkable part played in the action by co- 
 incidence or parallelism of incidents. The author was 
 now trying his hand at curious plot-patterns. A young 
 man carefully guarded by his widowed father and 
 brought up in America to be a gentleman of rare quality ; 
 a girl similarly tended by her father in a walled garden 
 of Smyrna. They are engaged to each other by their 
 fathers without ever having met. Each rebels against 
 this arbitrary disposition of hand and heart, and in the 
 end they find each other quite to one another's taste. 
 Such is a part of the plot of "Eugene Pickering," dating 
 from 1874." Equally remarkable for correspondences 
 
 i« "Scribner's," September. 
 
 " "The Atlantic," October-November. 
 
i86 The Method of Henry James 
 
 of incident are certain tales published within the next 
 few years. 
 
 A special essay in romance is "Gabrielle de Ber- 
 gerac,"^* so far as I know the single case (apart from 
 "The Romance of Certain Old Clothes") in which James 
 goes back of 1800 for the date of his story. It is a 
 deliberate study in historical romance, and not without 
 its charm — though all the materials are unique in the 
 work of James. It is a kind of pastiche of Scarron, 
 Watteau, Rousseau, Walter Scott, with a spice of Haw- 
 thorne and other American writers. The influence of 
 Hawthorne is particularly noticeable in "Benvolio,"" a 
 story absolutely lacking in dialogue, in which most of the 
 characters are known by function (Countess, Professor) 
 instead of name, and in which the scene is not more 
 localized than is implied by the presence of theatres and 
 castles. This tale is a product of the same year as 
 "Roderick Hudson." 
 
 Meantime James's experiments in assorted romance 
 had culminated in a set of tales more interesting than 
 any I have discussed, and heralding his arrival at the 
 state of mastership. The tales of this group derive their 
 interest from the spirit of place, — from the glamour of 
 foreign scenes and crowding old-world associations. Of 
 these he judged worthy of inclusion in his collected 
 works "A Passionate Pilgrim" and "The Madonna of 
 the Future."^" The first presents through the vision of a 
 half-crazed American the heady charm of the English 
 country, of English houses, English colleges, English 
 
 " "The Atlantic," July- September, 1869. 
 
 19 "The Galaxy," August, 1875. 
 
 20 Both first published in "The Atlantic," the one in March- 
 April, 1871, the other in March, 1873. 
 
Obscure Beginnings i8f 
 
 inns and English ghosts. It is written in the youthful 
 glow of first discovery, and cannot fail to captivate any 
 reader who is still capable of enthusiasm. It has a good, 
 if somewhat fantastic, old-fashioned story. "The Ma- 
 donna of the Future" has less story, but is an agreeable 
 evocation of the atmosphere of Florence and the passion 
 of the artist. Three less favored studies in European 
 glamour are "The Sweetheart of Monsieur Briseux" (an 
 episode in the lives of an American woman and a French 
 painter), "The Last of the Valerii" and "Travelling 
 Companions."^^ 
 
 It is sufficiently obvious why the author has repudiated 
 the very early "Travelling Companions," — ^the first of 
 his fictions laid in Europe excepting the historical 
 romance of "Gabrielle de Bergerac." It is the story of 
 a young American couple who were drawn together by 
 the sentiments they shared for Italy. The text is made 
 up of alternating blocks of narrative proper and effusions 
 on art and history. This work of fiction, which appeared 
 in the "Atlantic" in the year 1870, might have served 
 for a complete travelers' guide to Milan, Venice and 
 Rome. The readers were given full directions as to what 
 they should see and feel in Milan cathedral, upon the 
 Lido, in the Borghese Gallery and at the Villa Pamfili- 
 Doria. And they were further elevated with the thought 
 of all the personal experiences which might be associated 
 with these sublime artistic impressions. The heroine 
 proves herself "worthy to know Venice," as the hero puts 
 it, by breaking into sobs over Tintoretto's Crucifixion. 
 The author shows himself a man of feeling and taste in 
 his own right in many purple patches of fervid sentiment 
 
 21 First appearing, respectively, in "The Galaxy," June, 1873, 
 and "The Atlantic," January, 1874, and November-December, 
 1870. 
 
i88 The Method of Henry James 
 
 and description. I will underline a few of the emphatic 
 words in the description of Leonardo's Last Supper; 
 though that would scarce be necessary to make the reader 
 feel the exalted tone of the young enthusiast : 
 
 The most strictly impressive picture in Italy is incon- 
 testably the Last Supper of Leonardo at Milan ... its 
 immense solemnity. . . . The mind finds a rare delight 
 in filling each of its vacant spaces, effacing its rank defile- 
 ment, and repairing, as far as possible, its sad disorder. 
 . . . An unquenchable elegance lingers in those vague 
 outlines and incurable scars; enough remains to place 
 you in sympathy with the unfathomable wisdom of the 
 painter. 
 
 The following description of the Venetian basilica is, I 
 believe, unique in the work of Henry James for its 
 orotund arrangements of cadenced repetition. He must 
 have been reading Ruskin. 
 
 It was that enchanting Venetian hour when the ocean- 
 touching sun sits melting to death, and the whole still air 
 seems to glow with the soft effusion of his golden sub- 
 stance. Within the church, the deep brown shadow- 
 masses, the heavy thick-tinted air, the gorgeous compos- 
 ite darkness, reigned in richer, quainter, more fantastic 
 gloom than my feeble pen can reproduce the likeness of. 
 From those rude concavities of dome and semi-dome, 
 where the multitudinous facets of pictorial mosaic shim- 
 mer and twinkle in their own dull brightness ; from the 
 vast antiquity of innumerable marbles, incrusting the 
 walls in roughly-mated slabs, cracked and polished and 
 triple-tinted with eternal service; from the wavy carpet 
 of compacted stone, where a thousand once-bright frag- 
 ments glimmer through the long attrition of idle feet 
 and devoted knees; from sombre gold and mellow ala- 
 baster, from porphyry and malachite, from long dead 
 crystal and the sparkle of undying lamps, — there proceeds 
 a dense rich atmosphere of splendor and sanctity which 
 transports the half stupefied traveller to the age of a 
 
Obscure Beginnings i8p 
 
 simpler and more awful faith. I wandered for half an 
 hour beneath those reverted cups of scintillating dark- 
 ness, stimibling on the great stony swells of the pavement 
 as I gazed upward at the long mosaic saints who curve 
 gigantically with the curves of dome and ceiling. I had 
 left Europe ; I was in the East. An overwhelming sense 
 of the sadness of man's spiritual history took possession 
 of my heart. The clustering picturesque shadows about 
 me seemed to represent the darkness of a past from 
 which he had slowly and painfully struggled." Etc., etc. 
 
 How gratifying this passage must have been to the souls 
 of those starved New England spinsters set before us 
 in some of the later stories of James ! How fondly they 
 must have read it out to one another ! 
 
 Of all this group of tales, the most expert, the most 
 consistent in tone, the most successful in its evocation of 
 the spirit of the past and the brooding loveliness of the 
 present in the foreign scene is "The Last of the Valerii." 
 To my taste it is a better story than either of those picked 
 by Mr. James for preservation. The action is laid in 
 Rome, and almost exclusively in the garden of an ancient 
 villa, with its ilex walks, its lingering golden afternoon 
 light, its picturesque decay and its buried statuary. Per- 
 haps it was judged by the author too fantastic in its 
 donnee. For it has to do with a Roman nobleman of our 
 days capable of worshipping and doing sacrifice to a 
 Grecian goddess. But this is scarcely less credible than 
 the story of an American cousin so highly distinguished 
 by the visitation of an English ghost. Perhaps the deter- 
 mining fact for James was a sense of having opened for 
 us the intimate consciousness of the passionate Pilgrim 
 as he could not do that of the less self-conscious Roman. 
 Perhaps he wished to avoid being accused of following 
 too closely in the footsteps of Hawthorne. Or did he 
 fear the charge of plagiarism in view of the similarity 
 
190 The Method of Henry James 
 
 of his theme to that of Prosper Merimee in his "Venus 
 d'lUe" ? Whatever his motive, it is doubtful whether the 
 public will accept his verdict in this case and leave to 
 oblivion so charming an introduction to "Roderick Hud- 
 son" and "The Portrait of a Lady." 
 
 And thus Henry James had found himself, and had 
 emerged from the period of helpless groping. It is true 
 these tales may be classed unhesitatingly as romance, 
 while the best work of James would probably be labelled 
 realism. "The Last of the Valerii" dates from 1874, and 
 of the same year is "Madame de Mauves," — a story of 
 domestic relations, of spiritual adjustments, of the hard 
 conditions and restraints of the common lot. In the fol- 
 lowing year comes "Roderick Hudson," a study in social 
 contrasts ; and so begins the long series of psychological 
 novels and briefer sketches of social action and reaction. 
 But it would be perversity to ignore the strain of fine 
 romance that runs through the whole series. Mr. James 
 himself has acknowledged the obviously romantic back- 
 ground of "The American." And everyone knows how 
 large a part is played in all his great stories by the gla- 
 mour of the old world, — ^by its Weltansicht, its clustering 
 associations, and its sheer physical charm. In "The 
 American" and "The Ambassadors," is' not Paris a prime 
 source of interest ? In "Roderick Hudson," is it not the 
 Rome of "The Marble Faun"; in "The Princess Casa- 
 massima" and "The Wings of the Dove," the London of 
 Dickens and Whistler; in "The Aspern Papers" and 
 "The Wings of the Dove" again, is it not the Venice of 
 Byron and Ruskin ? There was still in 1874 much to learn 
 in the matter of technique and of life. But these things 
 would follow soon enough once the author had discovered 
 his "Europe." "Seek ye first the kingdom of Gk)d, and 
 all these things shall be added unto you" ! 
 
II 
 
 EARLY PRIME 
 
 The first main period of production, covering a decade 
 and a half, was signalized by five novels of great power 
 and charm. Through these years James was feeling his 
 way towards that method which was to characterize all 
 the work of the later period. It will be interesting to 
 trace his progress through the series, not wholly ignoring 
 the individual quality of the novels in our primary con- 
 cern with evolving technique. 
 
 (a) Roderick Hudson 
 
 The first one of James's fictions of really monumental 
 proportions was "Roderick Hudson," produced in 1876. 
 This strong and engaging story is marked in a dozen 
 ways as the production of his youth. Some of these I 
 have already dwelt upon : notably the variegated pictur- 
 esqueness of the characters, and the use of the dialogue 
 for the display of their htunors rather than for the 
 unfolding of the idea. Equally remarkable is the gener- 
 osity and promptitude with which the author presents 
 us with our information. Before he has given us a dozen 
 pages of the story proper, he takes nearly that number 
 to tell us all he knows of Rowland Mallet and his ante- 
 cedents — all he knows, and much more than we care to 
 know at the time or shall ever have a need for knowing. 
 When we have arrived at Rome and are present at Row- 
 land's studio tea, we receive an extended conscientious 
 
icf2 The Method of Henry James 
 
 account of the interesting artistic people we are to meet 
 there. Each one has a paragraph to himself, and as 
 some of them are of a certain quaintness of character, 
 we have the feeling that we may be reading a paper 
 by some new Dick Steele giving account of a new Spec- 
 tator club. There is for example Sam Singleton, whose 
 portrait I shall venture to introduce entire. 
 
 Rowland's second guest was also an artist, but of a very 
 different type. His friends called him Sam Singleton; 
 he was an American, and he had been in Rome a couple 
 of years. He painted small landscapes, chiefly in water- 
 colour ; Rowland had seen one of them in a shop window, 
 had liked it extremely and, ascertaining his address, had 
 gone to see him and found him established in a very 
 humble studio near the Piazza Barberini, where appar- 
 ently fame and fortune had not yet come his way. Row- 
 land, treating him as a discovery, had bought several of 
 his pictures; Singleton made few speeches, but was 
 intensely grateful. Rowland heard afterwards that when 
 he first came to Rome he painted worthless daubs and 
 gave no promise of talent. Improvement had come, how- 
 ever, hand in hand with patient industry, and his talent, 
 though of a slender and delicate order, was now incon- 
 testable. It was as yet but scantily recognised and he had 
 hard work to hold out. Rowland hung his little water- 
 colours on the library wall, and found that as he lived 
 with them he grew very fond of them. Singleton, short 
 and spare, was made as if for sitting on very small 
 camp-stools and eating the tiniest luncheons. He had a 
 transparent brown regard, a perpetual smile, an extraor- 
 dinary expression of modesty and patience. He listened 
 much more willingly than he talked, with a little fixed 
 grateful grin; he blushed when he spoke, and always 
 offered his ideas as if he were handing you useful objects 
 of your own that you had unconsciously dropped ; so that 
 his credit could be at most for honesty. He was so 
 perfect an example of the little noiseless devoted worker 
 whom chance, in the person of a moneyed patron, has 
 
Early Prime 193 
 
 never taken by the hand, that Rowland would have liked 
 to befriend him by stealth.* 
 
 This is all, it will be observed, a perfectly general 
 account of the little painter; it is given en bloc on the 
 authority of the novelist. The later method may be 
 illustrated by the description of Little Bilham, a character 
 in "The Ambassadors" somewhat akin to Sam Singleton. 
 We have our introduction to Little Bilham in the account 
 given by Strether to Wayma'rsh of his visit to Chad's 
 apartments. Strether did not go there to make the 
 acquaintance of any "little artist-man," but to learn some- 
 thing of the situation of Chad. He has now the knowl- 
 edge that he doesn't know anything. So much he learned 
 from Little Bilham. 
 
 "That's what I found out from the young man." 
 
 "But I thought you said you found out nothing." 
 
 "Nothing but that — that I don't know anything." 
 
 "And what good does that do you?" 
 
 "It's just," said Strether, "what I've come to you to 
 help me to discover. I mean anything about anything 
 over here. I felt that, up there. It regularly rose before 
 me in its might. The young man moreover — Chad's 
 friend — as good as told me so." 
 
 "As good as told you you know nothing about any- 
 thing?" Wajmiarsh appeared to look at some one who 
 might have as good as told him. "How old is he ?" 
 
 "Well, I guess not thirty." 
 
 "Yet you had to take that from him?" 
 
 "Oh, I took a good deal more — since, as I tell you, 
 I took an invitation to dejeuner." 
 
 "And are you going to that unholy meal?" 
 
 "If you'll come with me. He wants you too, you know. 
 I told him about you. He gave me his card," Strether 
 pursued, "and his name's rather funny. It's John 
 
 1 Vol. I, pp. 108-109. 
 
194 The. Method of Henry James 
 
 Little Bilham, and he says his two surnames are, on 
 account of his being small, inevitably used together." 
 
 "Well," Waymarsh asked with due detachment from 
 these details, "what's he doing up there ?" 
 
 "His accoimt of himself is that he's 'only a little artist- 
 man.' That seemed to me perfectly to describe him. 
 But he's yet in the phase of study; this, you know, is 
 the great art-school — to pass a certain number of years 
 in which he came over. And he's a great friend of 
 Chad's, and occupying Chad's rooms just now because 
 they're so pleasant. He's very pleasant and curious too," 
 Strether added — "though he's not from Boston." 
 
 Waymarsh looked already rather sick of him. "Where 
 is he from?" 
 
 Strether thought. "I don't know that, either. But he's 
 'notoriously,' as he put it himself, not from Boston." 
 
 "Well," Waymarsh moralised from dry depths, "every 
 one can't notoriously be from Boston. Why," he con- 
 tinued, "is he curious?" 
 
 "Perhaps just for that — for one thing! But really," 
 Strether added, "for everything. When you meet him 
 you'll see." 
 
 "Oh, I don't want to meet him," Waymarsh impa- 
 tiently growled. "Why don't he go home ?" 
 
 Strether hesitated. "Well, because he likes it over 
 here." 
 
 This appeared in particular more than Waymarsh could 
 bear. "He ought then to be ashamed of himself, and, 
 as you admit you think so too, why drag him in ?" ^ 
 
 But the last question carries them beyond Little Bilham. 
 We may have, as the result of this dialogue, a small 
 provision of fact about him. But we have, what is more 
 to the purpose, a most vivid impression of what he stands 
 for; and, what is still more to the purpose, we have the 
 states of mind of Strether and Waymarsh in regard to 
 this curious and significant person. 
 
 2 Vol. XXI, pp. 106-108. 
 
Early Prime 195 
 
 Sometimes in "Roderick Hudson" James has one of his 
 characters relate the facts to another in conversation. 
 Thus Madame Grandoni gives Rowland an account of 
 Christina Light and her mother. But she does it in 
 one (very long) breath. It takes an almost uninterrupted 
 speech of five pages. James seems a bit conscious himself 
 of the formidableness of such a block of information, 
 and he makes a kind of acknowledgment of guilt. "Your 
 report's as solid," Rowland said to Madame Grandoni, 
 thanking her, "as if it had been drawn up for the 
 Academy of Sciences."* 
 
 It is in the same deliberate fashion that the author 
 describes the dwellings of his characters and the scenes 
 they visit. And the narrative itself is largely conducted 
 by passages of generalization. Dialogues are summa- 
 rized in crowded paragraphs of exposition. The author! 
 feels responsible for every moment of his characters'! 
 time. But when he gives us an account of their occupa- D 
 tions, it is at long range and in shorthand, as one writes 1 
 up one's diary for the past month without attention to 
 the particular dates. The young author is very bold in 
 the summary account of character and of states of mind. 
 And not content with giving the general facts about such 
 and such a person, he must needs soar still higher to the 
 facts of human nature at large. "Very odd, you may say, 
 that at this time of day Rowland should still be brooding 
 over a girl of no brilliancy, of whom he had had a bare 
 glimpse two years before; very odd that an impression 
 should have fixed itself so sharply under so few applica- 
 tions of the die. It is of the very nature of such impres- 
 sions, however, to show a total never represented by the 
 mere sum of their Constituent parts."* Thus he calls 
 
 sVol. I, p. 166. 
 * Id., p. 313. 
 
/pd The Method of Henry James 
 
 our attention to the fineness and the high comprehensive- 
 ness of his psychology, — ^merits which the maturer artist 
 would have left us to find out for ourselves. 
 
 So much for technique in the narrower sense. In the 
 larger view the novel is perhaps equally far from the 
 distinctive manner of James. It has an idea, and a very 
 interesting one: that, to put it briefly, of genius and its 
 frequent tendency to claim exemptions not accorded to 
 ordinary humanity: genius and its sometimes appalling 
 "nostalgie de la houe." This idea is scarcely however 
 conceived pictorially. The story is just the chronological 
 account of the degeneration of a genius thus claiming 
 unholy license. And we are never really made to tmder- 
 stand this process. There is something too mysterious 
 about the ruin that comes upon Roderick ; we are never 
 rightly made acquainted with the demon who rides him 
 to destruction. 
 
 A main reason for the failure of the book to make its 
 point is the unhappy choice of an interpreter. It may 
 be that Rowland Mallet regards himself as the person 
 in whom we are most interested. But in that case he is 
 quite mistaken. He is an estimable gentleman, with 
 whom we sympathize, and whom we should like to meet 
 in the flesh — he is indeed an immature forerunner of 
 Lambert Strether — ^but he cannot divert our attention 
 from his more vivid and naughty comrade. And we 
 naturally resent being cheated of the experience of 
 Roderick by having it shown us through the judicial 
 optics of Rowland. 
 
 But in spite of all, the book is unmistakably the work 
 of Henry James. I do not wish to burden the reader 
 with a review of the many ways in which it shows his 
 well-known character. I must content myself with not- 
 ing the strong, distinctive flavor of James in certain pas- 
 
Early Prime ipy 
 
 sages between Rowland and Christina. Christina is 
 really the best thing in this book. She is not altogether 
 unworthy of herself as she appears in "The Princess 
 Casamassima." She is to Rowland something of the 
 enigma she became later for Hyacinth Robinson. "He 
 felt it a rare and expensive privilege to watch her. . . . 
 The background of her nature had a sort of landscape 
 largeness and was mysterious withal, emitting strange, 
 fantastic gleams and flashes. Waiting for these was 
 better sport than some kinds of fishing. Moreover it was 
 not a disadvantage to talk with a girl who forced one to 
 make sure of the sufficiency of one's wit."" Christina 
 had the beauty of having a "systdm" ; and no little part 
 of their dialogue (as in the fourteenth chapter) reflects 
 Rowland's attempt to get a glimpse of this system. There 
 is one interchange in particular, in the twentieth chapter, 
 which might almost have occurred in "The Awkward 
 Age" or "The Golden Bowl," considering the interest 
 shown by Christina in a fine point of Rowland's and the 
 fine point which she produces herself as an outcome of 
 their sharp fencing match. Rowland has challenged her 
 intentions in regard to Roderick and the Prince, now that 
 she has made the acquaintance of Roderick's Mary. 
 
 "Would you have done this [throw over the Prince] 
 if you had not seen a certain person ?" 
 
 "What person?" 
 
 "The young lady you so much admire." 
 
 She looked at him with quickened attention; then 
 suddenly, "This is really interesting," she exclaimed. 
 "Let us see what's in it." And she flung herself into a 
 chair and pointed to another. 
 
 "You don't answer my question," Rowland said. 
 
 "You've no right that I know of to ask it. But it's 
 
 = Vol. I, p. 277. 
 
ig8 The Method of Henry James 
 
 very intelligent — it puts such a lot into it. Into my 
 having seen her, I mean." She paused a moment ; then 
 with her eyes on him, "She helped me certainly," she 
 went on. 
 
 "Provoked you, you mean, to hurt her — through 
 Roderick ?" 
 
 For a moment she deeply coloured, and he had really 
 not intended to force the tears to her eyes. A cold clear- 
 ness, however, quickly forced them back. "I see your 
 train of reasoning, but it's really all wrong. I meant no 
 harm whatever to Miss Garland; I should be extremely 
 sorry to cause her any distress. Tell me that, since I 
 assure you of that, you believe it." 
 
 "How am I to tell you," he asked in a moment, "that 
 I don't?" 
 
 "And yet your idea of an inward connexion between 
 our meeting and what has happened since corresponds 
 to something that has been, for me, an inward reality. I 
 took into my head, as I told you," Christina continued, 
 "to be greatly struck with Miss Garland (since that's 
 her sweet name!) and I frankly confess that I was 
 tormented, that I was moved to envy, call it, if you like, 
 to jealousy, by something I found in her. There came 
 to me there in five minutes the sense of her character. 
 C'est bien beau, you know, a character like that, and I got 
 it full in the face. It made me say to myself 'She in my 
 place would never marry Gennaro — ^no, no, no, never!' 
 I couldn't help coming back to it, and I thought of it so 
 often that I found a kind of inspiration in it. I hated the 
 idea of being worse than she — of doing something that 
 she wouldn't do. . . . The end of it all was that I found 
 it impossible not to tell the Prince that I was his very 
 humble servant, but that decidedly I couldn't take him 
 for mine." 
 
 "Are you sure it was only of Miss Garland's character 
 that you were jealous," Rowland asked, "and not of her 
 affection for her cousin ?" 
 
 "Sure is a good deal to say. Still, I think I may do so. 
 There are two reasons ; one at least I can tell you. Her 
 
Early Prime ipp 
 
 affection has not a shadow's weight with Mr. Hudson! 
 Why then should one resent it?" 
 
 "And what's the other reason?" 
 
 "Excuse me; that's my own affair." 
 
 Rowland felt himself puzzled, baffled, charmed, 
 inspired. . . .* 
 
 This dialogue is most characteristic. But apart from 
 the question of the characteristic, many readers have 
 declared themselves held and charmed by the story of 
 "Roderick Hudson." However obscure the process may 
 remain, the degeneration of Roderick is undoubtedly an 
 enthralling spectacle, making its appeal both to the moral 
 sense and to the deeper fount of sjrmpathy. Not too far 
 below Roderick and Christina in interest are Mary Gar- 
 land and Rowland. For even Rowland is a more vividly 
 reahzed and a more attractive character than most of 
 those in the novels discussed in the next chapter. And if 
 the characters in a novel are real and interesting, we need 
 not resort to the charm of setting or any other merit to 
 explain why the novel lives. 
 
 (b) The American 
 
 "The American" is the first large essay of James in 
 treatment of thejbeaie that was to occupy so much of 
 his attention all along,-^the contr ast of the American and 
 *W V^^ r^v?^" rv^tusMH. Alid it ' reniams "rortfai5"d3Tan" 
 effective piece of work./Xhe_selfdny^^_A|nencan_w^^ 
 out antecedents and traditions b rought in contrastjwitiii^a 
 
 ~ilfei?the man of strong and unlimited self-reliance in 
 contrast to men and women hedged and thwarted in every 
 direction by the restraints of family and caste — ^the 
 
 « Vol. I, pp. 404-405. 
 
200 The Method of Henry James 
 
 simple, straightforward, easy-going westerner in his 
 dealings with these formal, sophisticated, inordinately 
 polite and treacherous people; it makes a story and a 
 spectacle of endless richness and variety. The idea is 
 clearly conceived, and there is no detail of the story that 
 it does not inform anc^'^^ma'ke relevant. /The sub-plot of 
 Valentine de Bellegard^ and Npemie Nioche is obviously 
 introduced for t^e purpose of mustrating certain aspects 
 of the social contrast which do n<(t come out in New- 
 man's own love affair. The friendsntp-^f Valentin and 
 Christopher is a delightful case of the mutual attraction 
 of opposites. "No two parties to an alliance could have 
 come to it from a wider separation, but it was what each 
 brought out of the queer dim distance that formed the 
 odd attraction for the other."^ 
 
 The social contrast comes out most strikingly, however, 
 and certainly to our greatest amusement, in the series of 
 scenes in which the blunt and humorous westerner is 
 opposed to the frigid courtliness of the elder Bellegardes, 
 above all on those occasions when, having accepted him 
 as a suitor for the hand of Claire, they yet endeavor, 
 largely without success, to make him understand the 
 enormous condescension in their friendly treatment of a 
 "commercial" person. The American millionaire, con- 
 scious of his own power and his own good character, can 
 be made to appreciate but dimly the social inferiority im- 
 puted to him. He does feel keenly, however, if some- 
 what obscurely, the quality of culture displayed in the 
 manners of his French friends. He feels it naturally 
 most of all in the style of the woman he loves. "She 
 gave him, the charming woman, the sense of an elaborate 
 education, of her having passed through mysterious cere- 
 monies and processes of culture, of her having been 
 
 7 Vol. II, p. 139. 
 
Early Prime 201 
 
 fashioned and made flexible to certain deep social needs. 
 All this . . . made her seem rare and precious — a very 
 expensive article."* Her rank made of Claire de Cintre 
 "a kind of historical formation." Rank was something 
 which heretofore he had heard attributed only to military 
 personages. He now appreciated the attribution of rank 
 to women. "The designations representing it in France 
 struck him as ever so pretty and becoming, with a prop- 
 erty in the bearer, this particular one, that might match 
 them and make a sense — something fair and softly bright, 
 that had motions of extraordinary lightness and indeed a 
 whole new and unfamiliar play of emphasis and pressure, 
 a new way, that is, of not insisting and not even, as one 
 might think, wanting or knowing, yet all to the effect 
 of attracting and pleasing."' But even the odious rela- 
 tives of Claire and the gentry gathered together by them 
 at their ball share this quality of rank, and something 
 of the finish and beauty of style entailed in their being 
 likewise "historical formations." And we may say in 
 passing that the American himself does not come out at 
 all badly in the comparison. His manners, while not the 
 least bit historical, have a freedom and candor, a large- 
 ness and natural breeding, which make you prefer them 
 to the article more expensively produced. 
 
 It is an effective piece of work. . . . And it is very 
 much in the early manner. I will not dwell on the super- 
 ficial points of' technique in which it resembles "Roderick 
 Hudson." The dialogue is often very good ; but not at all 
 in the way the~dialogue is good in "The Awkward Age." 
 It is refreshing to have the hero "bet his Hfe on" some- 
 thing, or to have him urge an amused Parisian to "give" 
 somebody "one in the eye." There are passages of talk. 
 
 *Vol. II, p. 165. 
 9 Id., p. 122. 
 
202 The Method of Henry James 
 
 however, which have somewhat lost their savor. We 
 cannot help feeling at times that Valentin and even his 
 sister are permitted to show themselves younger and less 
 practiced hands than the author intended. And we are 
 conscious of a certain perfunctory character in most of 
 Newman's exemplary love-making. 
 
 Jtiit thp p firly T"""^'" is exhibited in ways more impor- 
 tant than these. It resides essentially in what we may 
 call the greater objectivity of the work. The chief con- 
 cern of the author seems to be for the .scenical effective- 
 ness of what is said and done. In the later work the 
 scene is used chiefly in order to objectify the idea. Here 
 the idea is the opportunity for scene. The characters 
 express themselves more violently here, in word and 
 gesture. This emotional emphasis reaches its culmination 
 in the chapter in which Claire announces her intention of 
 becoming a nun. In this one chapter^" we read that 
 "Newman gave a great rap on the floor with his stick 
 .and a long grim laugh"; that "he struck his heart and 
 '(became more eloquent than he knew"; that he "almost 
 shouted"; "he glared as if at her drowning beyond help, 
 then he broke out"; "he clasped his hands and began 
 to tremble visibly"; "he dropped into a chair and sat 
 looking at her with a long inarticulate wail" ; "he sprang 
 to his feet in loud derision." Nowhere else in James, 
 I think, is there such a lavish use of irony as that in- 
 dulged in by Newman and the grim Marquise. Their 
 remarks are as good as lines in a smart play. And that 
 is the point. TV,oco_^r.op^ j p whi^ r i n vv vv i H 'Ifljjn'l old 
 
 t heir thoa4jrir?i1 i ^ee t ivonccc , like certain brilliant scenes 
 in Thackeray or in Dumas pere. Such is the scene in 
 
 Twhich the Marquis is obliged to introduce to all his 
 
 ^ 10 Chap. XX. 
 
Early Prime 203 
 
 monde the "commercial" person who is going to marry 
 his sister. Such is the scene in the Pare Monceau in 
 which Newman announces to the Marquis and the old 
 Marquise his possession of the incriminating paper. It 
 makes a fine show, the bravery with which his adver- 
 saries, deep-stricken as they are, bear up in the face of 
 the world, — their display of that "very superior style of 
 brazen assurance, of what M. Nioche called I'usage du 
 monde and Mrs. Tristram called the grand manner."^'^ 
 This is not incompatible with a suppressed but terrible 
 exhibition of passion. Upon one of Newman's ironic 
 sallies on this occasion, "the Marquis gave a hiss that 
 fairly evoked for our friend some vision of a hunched 
 back, an erect tail and a pair of shining evil eyes. 'I 
 demand of you to step out of our path !' "^^ That is good 
 "business," and a good line. But the best line of all is that 
 of the Marquis in the scene where Newman has informed 
 him and his mother of Valentin's death-bed apology for 
 their conduct. He had apologized for the conduct of 
 his own mother! "For a moment the effect of these 
 words was as if he had struck a physical blow. A quick 
 flush leaped into the charged faces before him — it was 
 like a jolt of full glasses, making them spill their wine. 
 Urbain uttered two words which Newman but half 
 heard, but of which the aftersehse came to him in the 
 reverberation of the sound. 'Le miserable !' "^^ 
 
 The point of view is throughout chiefly that of New- 1 
 man. But not the same use is made of this as would 
 have been made in a later book. We see what Newman 
 sees, but he does not interpret it to us. The author inter- 
 prets it, and he is sometimes obliged — ^in order to get 
 
 " P. 496. 
 " P. 489. 
 IS P. 431. 
 
204 The Method of Henry James 
 
 Newman into the picture — 16 give us a glimpse or two 
 beyond what Newman sees. "We have noted him as 
 observant," says James in the scene when the Marquise is 
 forced to invite Newman to a ball at her house ; "yet on 
 this occasion he failed to catch a thin sharp eyebeam, as 
 cold as a flash of steel, which passed between Madame 
 de Bellegarde and the Marquis, and which we may pre- 
 sume to have been a commentary on ithe innocence dis- 
 played in that latter clause of this speech." ^* That latter 
 clause had been a statement that "it mattered very little 
 whether he met his friends at her house or his own." 
 TJiis showed how little he understood of the ways of 
 thought of those with whom he was dealing. All along 
 he showed surprising unconsciousness of the pitfalls 
 amid which he was walking. All along he was very 
 J^gely unaware of the comedy in which he was playing 
 -his part. It was in vain, for example, that Valentin tried 
 to make him understand what was involved in the con- 
 descension of Urbain and his mother. And when he 
 refrained from explanations, Christopher had no idea 
 what that cost him. | "I know not," says the author, 
 "whether in renouncing the mysterious opportunity to 
 which he alluded Valentin felt himself do something 
 very generous. If so he was not rewarded ; his generosity 
 was not appreciated. Newman failed to recognize any 
 power to disconcert or to wound him, and he had now no 
 sense of coming off easily."" \ 
 
 A story in which the main actor is so uninitiated can 
 TBear no very close resemblance to the story of Isabel 
 Archer or Fleda Vetch or Lambert Strether. There is 
 here no revelation of anything through Newman's con- 
 sciousness — nothing that depends on his understanding. 
 
 " P. 285. 
 " P. 160. 
 
Early Prime 205 
 
 There is in fact no spiritual dilemma. That is why the 
 book is not among the greatest of its author's. There is 
 a gallant fight for a woman. There is an amusing and 
 finally tragic social contrast in wV'^''' t''" American hero 
 is one of the terms. And that is the main point in which 
 this is recognizable as a novel of Henry James. 
 
 (c) The Portrait of a Lady 
 
 Most joyous of dates in all our chronicle is the year 
 1880. It is in contemplation of that year that the lover 
 of James feels his blood run warmest. The footlights 
 flash on, the fiddles begin, and faces brighten in antici- 
 pation of the three knocks and the parted curtain. It is 
 not that "Scribner's" was concluding in January of that 
 year the publication of "Confidence," nor that "Harper's" 
 from July to December was setting forth the charming 
 study of "Washington Square." It is that the "Atlantic" 
 this side the water and "Macmillan's" in London were 
 showing each month in successive tableaux the entralling 
 "Portrait of a Lady." This was the first masterpiece 
 of Henry James. 
 
 He was still far from his technical goal. In mechanical 
 ways the work is still very different from that, for 
 example, of "The Golden Bowl," to which it bears a 
 considerable likeness in theme, "The Portrait" is a novel 
 like other novels, taking us through successive stages 
 in the history of its characters. It is the biography of 
 Isabel Archer, and has the general character of a chroni- 
 cle. It covers a number of years, and includes a number 
 of substantial events. Nearly the whole first volume is 
 taken up with material which would have been excluded 
 from the more distinctive work of the later years. The 
 episode of Lord Warburton and his proposal, the death 
 
2o6 The Method of Henry James 
 
 of Mr. Touchett and his bequest to Isabel are two major 
 blocks of material which would have been treated briefly 
 and referentially as a part of the antecedent facts of the 
 story. "The Golden Bowl" begins at a point correspond- 
 ing to a point somewhat beyond the opening of the second 
 volume of the earlier novel, — just before the marriage 
 of the heroine, which ushers in (for Isabel as for 
 Maggie) the main^ dramatic complication. Not merely 
 does the author of "The Portrait" give a whole volume 
 to Isabel's earlier history as a grown woman. When 
 he has once got her launched in this earlier career, he 
 stops for the length of more than two chapters to bring 
 up to date her history as a girl and that of her cousin 
 Ralph. And this is not done, as it would have been done 
 after 1896, by reminiscence and dialogue as an integral 
 part of the narrative of present experience. 
 
 Again the earlier technique appears in the large num- 
 ber of characters of considerable importance. As in "The 
 Golden Bowl," there are but four major characters, — 
 Isabel, Osmond, Madame Merle and Warburton. But 
 over against the chorus-figure of Mrs. Assingham stand, 
 in "The Portrait," Ralph Touchett and Goodwood, Hen- 
 rietta Stackpole and Pansy, even if we leave out of 
 account Mr. and Mrs. Touchett, Mr. Rosier and Mr. 
 Bantling, and the Countess Gemini. And we can hardly 
 leave even them out of account, considering how much 
 attention is given to the character and personal history 
 of each one of them. 
 
 Mrs. Assingham, it will be remembered, is given no 
 personal history, and no character except that of a woman 
 exceedingly ingenious in the interpretation oi human 
 nature. She is necessary for the dialogue. The minor 
 characters of "The Portrait" have a similar function; 
 but they do not fulfil it to anything like the same extent, 
 
Early Prime 20/ 
 
 since the dialogue has taken on very little of its later 
 character. It serves chiefly to display the various breed- 
 ing and humors of the persons taking part. The author 
 has not yet so completely neutralized his characters as to 
 social tone. They still exhibit some of the variety and 
 picturesqueness proper to characters in a Victorian novel. 
 Vividest in this respect is Henrietta Stackpole, with her 
 militant Americanism, her militant independence, her 
 journalistic preoccupations, and her intense earnestness. 
 But even Madame Merle is occasionally given a touch 
 that suggests Thackeray more than James. She is per- 
 haps the most perfect creation of the book, and her line 
 is by no means any sort of vividness. Her line is the 
 most perfect suavity of maimer, the most impeccable of 
 self-effacing good taste. But there is at least one occa- 
 sion on which she is treated for a moment or two like a 
 person in a novel (or comedy) of "manners." Mrs. 
 Touchett is discussing the comparatively liberal treat- 
 ment accorded her by her husband in his will. 
 
 "He chose, I presume, to recognise the fact that though 
 I lived much abroad and mingled — ^you may say freely — 
 in foreign Ufe, I never exhibited the smallest preference 
 for anyone else." 
 
 "For anyone but yourself," Madame Merle mentally 
 observed; but the reflection was perfectly inaudible. 
 
 "I never sacrificed my husband to another," Mrs. 
 Touchett continued with her stout curtness. 
 
 "Oh, no," thought Madame Merle; "you never did 
 anything for another !"" 
 
 The author now goes on to explain the "cynicism in these 
 mute comments." Madame Merle had not of course 
 expected any bequest to herself. But — 
 
 " Vol. Ill, pp. 295-296. 
 
2o8 The Method of Henry James 
 
 The idea of a distribution of property — she would 
 ahnost have said of spoils — just now pressed upon her 
 senses and irritated her with a sense of exclusion. I am 
 far from wishing to picture her as one of the hungry 
 mouths or envious hearts of the general herd, but we 
 have already learned of her having desires that had never 
 been satisfied. If she had been questioned, she would 
 of course have admitted — ^with a fine proud smile — that 
 she had not the faintest claim to a share in Mr. Touchett's 
 relics. "There was never anything in the world between 
 us," she would have said. "There was never that, poor 
 man !" — with a fillip of her thumb and her third finger.^' 
 
 Perhaps something ,of this kind is necessary at this point 
 to give the reader a bit of a "tip" on what lies below the 
 surface of Madame Merle's exquisite manner. But in 
 the later work James would have managed to convey a 
 sense of these depths without the false note of vulgarity. 
 Or else, to the reader's confusion, he would have left him 
 to find out for himself without the aid of tips. 
 
 But the early manner is found in poin.ts more technical 
 and superficial than essential and organic. Essentially 
 "The Portrait" is the development of an idea by the 
 method of "revelation" described in our first part. The 
 adventures of Isabel Archer are more spiritual than 
 material. The stages of her chronicle are the stages by 
 which the painter fills out her portrait. Even in the 
 preliminary period of her English sojourn, we are occu- 
 pied with the discovery of a woman intensely concerned 
 to make her life fine, hoping "to find herself in a difficult 
 position, so that she should have the pleasure of being as 
 heroic as the occasion demanded." The proposal of Lord 
 Warburton is admitted merely in order that she may assert 
 in striking fashion her "enlightened pfejudice in favour 
 
 " Vol. Ill, pp. 296-297. 
 
Early Prime sop 
 
 of the free exploration of life."^* It is not ease and 
 security that are desired by this adventurous American 
 soul. She explains to her reproachful suitor that she 
 cannot hope to escape her fate, cannot avoid unhappiness 
 by separating herself from life — "from the usual chances 
 and dangers, from what most people know and suffer." " 
 With the entry of Madame Merle towards the end 
 of the first volume, the painter attacks the real back- 
 ground of his picture. A few chapters later his task 
 begins in earnest with the appearance of the Florentine 
 gentleman who is to become the most prominent feature 
 in the heroine's experience. From this point on, the work 
 is a masterpiece of revelation ; and if the details brought 
 out are chiefly details of "background" — having to do 
 with the characters of Osmond and Madame Merle — 
 that is essentially the case in the later books. The back- 
 ground circumstances are revealed through the conscious- 
 ness of the heroine who is the foreground figure; and 
 they tend to bring out in brighter relief the beauty of this 
 figure. Every trait of vanity and selfishness in Osmond 
 gives play to the corresponding traits of generous large- 
 mindedness in Isabel, as well as giving her occasion for 
 the display of resourcefulness in difficult social relations. 
 The coldness of his nature serves as foil to the flame-like 
 warmth of hers. And the earlier stages of their acquaint- 
 ance bring out sufficiently the large ground of taste and 
 sensibility which they have in common. I must deny my- 
 self the agreeable task of tracing from scene to scene the 
 nicely graduated steps by which this "sterile dilettante" 
 is betrayed to us first and then to Isabel, and the steps 
 by which there dawn upon her consciousness the more 
 
 " P. iss. ; 
 
 18 P. 187. 
 
210 The Method of Henry James 
 
 and more bewildering, the more and more heroic features 
 of her great adventure. 
 
 Nowhere is the concern of the story more beautifully 
 than in "The Portrait" the quality of experience. It is 
 not the bare facts of Gilbert's relation to Madame Merle 
 and Pansy, revealed at the climax of the story by the 
 Countess Gemini, that are of importance. It is the values 
 of life as conceived by Gilbert and by Madame Merle 
 upon which these facts throw their final interpretative 
 light. Nowhere is there a finer indication of those social 
 and esthetic values to which all the leading characters of 
 James are devoted than in the scenes of Isabel's growing 
 admiration for Osmond. Nowhere short of "Poynton" 
 and "The Golden Bowl" is there a finer display of the 
 spiritual values that transcend the others than in the 
 scenes of Isabel's growing horror of her husband. "The 
 Portrait of a Lady" has thus the distinction of being the 
 first novel in which the "figure in the carpet" stands out 
 in distinct and glowing beauty. 
 
 But no mere indication of the order of this novel 
 in the author's development will explain the many graces 
 and charms it possesses in its own right. There is some- 
 thing about the personality and situation of Isabel that 
 gives her a place unique in the whole gallery. It is a 
 place no man can occupy. A man may have the advan- 
 tage when it comes to the freedom of adventure of a 
 Pendennis or a Tom Jones. But the very limitations 
 upon her freedom, the delicacy of her position, give to 
 the adventures of a brave woman an attaching pathos, 
 and even a spiritual richness, which a man's can seldom 
 have. The limits of her experience outwardly compel 
 her to cultivate it intensively. 
 
 Of course it may be urged that Ralph Touchett shares 
 this advantage in disadvantage. And I am willing to 
 
Early Prime 211 
 
 grant him a very large measure of the attractiveness 
 of the generous fettered woman. He is a figure beauti- 
 fully conceived and executed. And indeed there is no 
 novel of James in which we find so many characters of 
 a warm and simple humanity. Something of a like 
 appeal is made by Mr. Touchett, by Pansy. We are fond 
 even of Henrietta, and we have a measure of charity 
 for Mrs. Touchett and the Countess Gemini. 
 
 In fineness of execution, Gilbert Osmond and Madame 
 Merle take their place beside Isabel herself. Madame 
 Merle is a figure of even rarer conception, — ^haying no 
 counterpart, as Isabel may be thought to have, among the 
 famous creations of Meredith and George Eliot. And she 
 is herself so much of a victim, and a person of so much 
 savoir vivre withal, and of so graceful and touching a 
 manner of exit, that we cannot forbear to open our hearts 
 even to her. 
 
 There is again a peculiar charm about the mise en 
 scene of this drama. None of the English country-places 
 that figure so largely in James is more lovely than that 
 of the American banker on the Thames. Have we per- 
 haps its model, by the way, in that other banker's home 
 alluded to by Mr. James in his life of Story ? Surely at 
 least the golden air so often referred to in that recon- 
 struction of the earlier time is what envelops the Floren- 
 tine villa of Gilbert Osmond in the days before his true 
 character has been revealed. 
 
 The lover of James will ever cherish this work as the 
 prime example of his early manner. It has the open face 
 of youth. There is a lightness and freshness of tone 
 about it that never recurs in the more labored work of 
 later years. It is the first of his compositions entirely 
 free from crudity and the last to show the unalloyed 
 charm of ingenuousness. 
 
212 The Method of Henry James 
 
 (d) The Princess Casamassima 
 
 Five years after "The Portrait of a Lady" appeared 
 another masterpiece, and this too, though very different 
 in quality, was an example of the early manner at its 
 best. 
 
 In some ways "The Princess Casamassima" shows an 
 advance in technique. It is true that the history of 
 Hyacinth Robinson is taken up at an even earlier point 
 than that of Isabel Archer, so that the opening chapters 
 have even more the biographical aspect. But the Prin- 
 cess, who represents in the experience of Hyacinth some- 
 thing like what Gilbert Osmond represents in that of 
 Isabel Archer, makes her appearance much earlier in the 
 book. There are decidedly fewer substantial happenings 
 in the later story, and a decidedly more limited cast of 
 characters. There are but two principals; and among 
 the minor characters — Miss Pynsent, Mr. Vetch, Paul 
 Muniment, Lady Aurora, M. Poupin, Millicent Henning 
 — none are made so prominent as several of the minor 
 characters in "The Portrait." They may be as important 
 functionally, but they are not so importunate on their 
 own behalf. They are drawn on a reduced scale, so as to 
 be kept in proper subordination to the "leads." 
 
 And if the characters and incidents as such are less 
 in evidence they are more strictly held to accountability 
 for their part in the "revelation." This story is another 
 beautiful instance of an "idea conceived as pictur g." It 
 is an idea such as Mr. Galsworthy gave so fine a treat- 
 ment in "Fraternity," — ^that of the privileged and the 
 submerged classes stretching out to one another vain 
 I hands across the social gulf. But while in Mr. Gals- 
 ttvorthy's story the situation is viewed chiefly from the 
 side of the privileged, in "The Princess Casamassima" 
 
Early Prime 213 
 
 it is the man born to the shabby Hfe of poverty who 
 seems from his side to see a door opening into the life 
 of large freedom and cultivated leisure. In the con- 
 sciousness of Hyacinth, the foreground is occupied by 
 the dark and painful spectacle of his fellow victims of 
 the social order, those less fortunate even than himself. 
 And his heart is filled with bitterness and the need for 
 action against the order that admits of so much ugliness j 
 and misery. But his encounter with the radiant creature^ 
 of privilege, his discovery of the possibilities of refinec^ 
 social intercourse, his survey in Paris and Venice of the 
 treasures of art and the accumulated beauty of historical 
 tradition, sap the strength of his conviction until he 
 becomes incapable of revolutionary action. The con-, 
 flicting forces of his inheritance symbolize and to some 
 extent create the insoluble problem that drives him to 
 suicide. 
 
 But I should not use the word problem. This novel 
 has not the slightest political intention. It is not even 
 meant to have historical and documentary value like the 
 Russian series of Turgenieflf. Mr. James does not pre- 
 tend to any exact knowledge of socialism. And I fear 
 that — ^at least in this connection — he had no practical 
 interest in it. His interest was entirely that of an artist 
 wishing to convey certain impressions. In this case it 
 was the long-accumulated impressions of London life 
 that besought him for artistic liberation. Again we are 
 made aware how little he is concerned with the bare 
 facts of experience. It was the color and feel of Hya- 
 cinth Robinson's experience of life that he wished to 
 render. And poverty and mutter of revolution, beautiful 
 clever women and hard resolute men, were — like Rose 
 Muniment and Millicent Henning — ^but strands in the 
 varicolored web of this experience. As for the revolu- 
 
21^ The Method of Henry James 
 
 tionary movement, the very vagueness of its presentation 
 was a part of James's scheme. "My scheme," he says 
 "called for the suggested nearness (to all our apparently 
 ordered life) of some sinister anarchic underworld, heav- 
 ing in its pain, its power and its hate; a presentation 
 not of sharp particulars, but of loose appearances, vague 
 motions and sounds and symptoms, just perceptible pres- 
 ences and general looming possibilities."^ 
 
 This story can never have quite the intensity of appeal 
 of "The Portrait." It has not the same element of drama. 
 And while the experience of the hero may be poignant 
 enough in its effect upon his feelings, it is not a domestic 
 experience, it is hot definitely formulated as a sentimental 
 tragedy. And it is for the domestic and the sentimental 
 drama that we reserve our most intense concern. 
 
 For all that, it is a masterpiece, "The Princess Casa- 
 massima." It is a work of great and finished beauty. 
 If "The Portrait" glows in our imagination with blue 
 and gold, with rich brown and crimson, "The Princess 
 Casamassima" shines with a subdued pearly lustre that 
 is a greater triumph of devoted skill. There is a velvety 
 smoothness in its movements and transitions. It is a 
 miracle of pitch and tone. The author has at last 
 achieved a perfect command of the mechanics of touch. 
 Character and scene, event and mystery are alike ren- 
 dered with due emphasis, and kept in their right place 
 in the total scale of values. 
 
 This does not mean that any of these elements is 
 subdued to the point of extinction. The minor characters 
 of this story have their special attractiveness. Here for 
 once James has given us his own peculiar variety of what 
 a grateful world agrees to call the Dickens type. To this 
 
 2» Vol. V, p. xxi. 
 
Early Prime 215 
 
 class of quaint and lovable characters belong Aunt Pinnie 
 and Rose Muniment, M. Poupin and the Lady Aurora. 
 And while none of these has the vivid salience of Dickens 
 figures, they are none the less real and endearing on that 
 account. The London of this story is likewise the entire 
 possession of James, — ^not the terrible black city of 
 "Oliver Twist" nor the burlesque London of the White 
 Horse Tavern; but for that very reason a city more 
 familiar to many a reader who has taken it in in the same 
 somewhat vague and disinterested way as the American 
 author. 
 
 But most prominent element of all in the experience 
 of Hyacinth is the mysterious and beautiful Princess, 
 recalled by the author to the stage for his special benefit. 
 She is for Hyacinth what so many of James's characters 
 crave as the breath of life, a "social relation."^^ But she is 
 also, for Hyacinth and for us, the mystery of a character 
 not thoroughly understood. We are soon made acquainted 
 with two of her leading traits, — her world-weariness and 
 her hatred of the banal — which together send her forth 
 on her bizarre adventure in the underworld. But what 
 we are never sure of is how far she is human, how far 
 she is capable of gratifying that desire for a social, a 
 human relation. This doubt becomes the great secondary 
 motif of the composition. And the gradual emergence 
 of certainty upon this question takes its place with the 
 gradual aggravation of Hyacinth's larger problem as a 
 perfect instance of the story-telling method of James. 
 
 21 The reader may remember the pathetic figure of Herbert 
 Dodd, keeper of a bookstore, in "The Bench of Desolation," and 
 the surprised delight with which he finally discovers himself to 
 be in a social relation with Kate Cookham. 
 
2i6 The Method of Henry James 
 
 (e) The Tragic Muse 
 
 It is often assumed, perhaps because of its date, that 
 "The Tragic Muse" is a transitional work, marking a 
 great advance towards the technique of the later period. 
 This seems to me a mistaken assumption. Both in refer- 
 ence to the course of James's technical evolution, and 
 in point of intrinsic worth, "The Tragic Muse" shows 
 a recession from the point reached in "The Portrait" and 
 "The Princess Casamassima." 
 
 It is, to be sure, a very fine novel. And in certain 
 obvious ways it is more advanced in technique than the 
 earlier masterpieces. It has not the biographical struc- 
 ture, concerned as it is with a company of people all 
 grouped together at the start in what may be compared 
 to the first act of a play. In this respect it gives the sense 
 of being more compact. And while there are passages 
 of generalizing psychology^^ and considerable "blocks of 
 referential narrative"''* in "The Tragic Muse," perhaps 
 upon inspection the earlier novels would show a larger 
 number of these telltale spots. 
 
 It is in the larger view that "The Tragic Muse" shows 
 the retrograde progress. I have noted before the effect 
 of the double plot for dissipating the intensity of interesj;. 
 There are just twice as many major characters in "The 
 Tragic Muse" as in "The Princess Casamassima." And 
 if we count as many major characters in "The Portrait" 
 as in "The Tragic Muse," there is the diflference of their 
 all being actors in one identical drama. The best that can 
 be said for "The Tragic Muse" is that the two separate 
 dramas are related and ingeniously woven together, and 
 ^that the idea developed is practically the same in each 
 
 22 See, for example. Vol. VII, pp. 148 and 185. 
 
 23 For example, pp. 81-88. 
 
Early Prime 21^ 
 
 case. But they remain two stories for all that ; and while 
 the idea may gain in comprehensiveness, it must lose in 
 continuity, intensity, and logical neatness of evolution. 
 And so the work is wanting in compactness, and above 
 all in leisureliness. In reference to certain parts of the 
 story of Miriam, James has himself acknowledged the 
 unduly rapid rate of progress, which has made impossible 
 any true representation of the circumstances. And we 
 feel the same want of leisurely development in the whole 
 of the first and last books. The first book is too full of 
 the bustle and commotion of marshalling his numerous 
 cohorts to admit the kind of exposition in which James 
 excels. It is all taken up with stage "business." As 
 for the last book, it makes almost the typical conclusion 
 of an old-fashioned novel, showing the benevolent 
 author's disposition of his puppets (what happened and 
 who got whom). It is very unlike the winding up of a 
 story of Henry James. 
 
 And this brings us to a realization that in essentials 
 the book is even less distinctive of James's matured 
 method than in the superficial aspects of technique. It 
 has an idea conceived as picture: so much is true. But 
 it is an inferior idea for the purposes of James. Inferior, 
 as we have seen, because so obvious, offering so little 
 for interpretation. I suppose one would hardly have been 
 able to predicate this in advance, especially considering 
 that James seems not to have done so himself. The 
 case of the artistic as against the practical temperament, 
 exemplified first in the relation of Nick Dormer to Julia 
 Dallow and secondly in that of Miriam to Peter Sherring- 
 ham, seemed to him to bristle with nice points for eluci- 
 dation. And it did make handsomely for complication 
 and excitement. It is exciting to read of the triumphs 
 of Miriam, of Nick Dormer's sacrifice of a career, of 
 
2i8 The Method of Henry James 
 
 the confrontation of Julia and Miriam in Nick's studio, 
 of the breathless return of Peter from the Indies. But 
 for the idea proper the material simply didn't "pan out." 
 It panned out best in two directions, — in connection with 
 Miriam and with the minor and altogether incidental 
 figure of Gabriel Nash. The latter is scarcely more than 
 a hving type of our "figure in the carpet" ; and the degree 
 of Nick Dormer's understanding of him is the degree of 
 his devotion to the life of the artist. So that the scenes 
 in which Gabriel Nash makes his apologia are for Nick 
 Dormer the scenes of "revelation." What Nick Dormer 
 wanted to make out was whether Gabriel Nash could 
 really be considered a gentleman, or whether his theory 
 and practice of "working in life" as an art did actually 
 make an ass of him. Peter Sherringham has a similar 
 perplexity in reference to Miriam. He is forever trying 
 to make out whether she has any "private life," to use the 
 phrase from another story of James. The revelation of 
 the artist-life to him is the revelation of her complete 
 absorption in artistic self-expression. But in the case 
 both of Nick's Gabriel and of Peter's Miriam, the possi- 
 bilities for revelation are soon exhausted, — certainly 
 before the end of the first volume. After that it is an 
 old story, with new items perhaps, but no extension of 
 light. Here we feel the contrast to "The Portrait of a 
 Lady" and "The Princess Casamassima," where the 
 revelation is only just beginning with the opening of the 
 second volume and where it goes on with growing inten- 
 sity to the end. 
 
 "The Tragic Muse" may very well be one of the most 
 popular of James's novels, especially for readers who are 
 not over fond of James. It has many material 
 features of interest. It has to do with the studio and 
 the stage; and we are all crazy about the stage in partic- 
 
Early Prime 2ip 
 
 ular, — or, as James himself makes the distinction, about 
 actors and "all the personal and outward side of stage 
 affairs. We like moreover to have the connection made 
 between the more Bohemian occupations and the impor- 
 tant figures of the political and the diplomatic world. 
 The people of "The Muse" are all such well-favored 
 imposing characters, playing their parts in the bright light 
 of general interest, — ^figures to arouse our envy and 
 admiration. It is nothing against them from this point 
 of view that they are ordinary figures. But the forte of 
 Henry James is another sort of figure, — ^the rare, the 
 retiring character, very fine if you can see the fineness, 
 but always in need of interpretation. Hyacinth Robinson 
 is such a rare one, and Ralph Touchett, Fleda Vetch and 
 Maggie Verver. But hardly Peter Sherringham or 
 Miriam Rooth or Julia Dallow. Gabriel Nash may be 
 a rare bird, but he is a bird of too strange a feather 
 for this category. I have spoken of Mr. Galsworthy's 
 "Fraternity" as being called to mind by "The Princess 
 Casamassima." "The Tragic Muse" has more likeness to 
 Mr. Galsworthy's "Patricians," which I presume to be 
 a more popular, as it is a much less beautiful, work than 
 "Fraternity." "The Patricians" and "The Tragic Muse" 
 remind me of particularly splendid oil paintings, sumptu- 
 ous Lawrences or Gainsboroughs, such as one finds in 
 collections that include only the soundest specimens of 
 certified value. They are guilty of no defect or short- 
 coming. They are well varnished and magnificently 
 framed. They are guaranteed to hold their colors. They 
 are distinctly important. But they are more handsome 
 than beautiful, more striking than rare. I am speaking 
 only comparatively, of course. The work of Mr. Gals- 
 worthy as well as the work of James, is never wholly 
 wanting in rarity. But it is our business and our sport 
 
220 The Method of Henry James 
 
 to make distinctions. Mr. James speaks with great satis- 
 faction of the sustained "tone" of "The Tragic Muse," 
 and he is no doubt right about it. Only one has to record 
 one's impression that it is — comparatively, of course — a 
 vulgar, or at any rate a common, tone. 
 
Ill 
 
 NON-CANONICAL 
 
 The work of James, like that of Mr. Hardy, showed, 
 almost to the end of his career, a most surprising uneven- 
 ness. Novels of great power were regularly accompanied 
 or succeeded by others distinctly inferior. It is as if the 
 stronger works had sapped the strength of those that 
 grew beside them, rising to a greater height and depriving 
 them of sunlight. Once or twice one is inclined to wonder 
 whether this fastidious artist, under pressure, was driven 
 to defend the integrity of his cherished works by a frank 
 sacrifice to the gods of the market of others less happily 
 born. But we are not forced to this hypothesis. It may 
 be sufficient to assume that, up to so late a period, the 
 restless spirit of the artist insisted on trying curious 
 experiments. And this is the more reasonable supposi- 
 tion, inasmuch as James had not thoroughly and success- 
 fully tried out his distinctive method in a long novel till 
 very near the end of all his writing. At any rate we must 
 record the fact that, in the course of the early period, 
 while he was producing the five superior novels discussed 
 in the last chapter, he was turning out no less than four 
 others for which he later found no place in his collected 
 works. 
 
 It has seemed more worth while to center attention 
 upon the superior works. And I shall not feel bound to 
 go over in perfunctory detail the many and obvious points 
 in which the rejected stories fall short of the ideal of 
 James. There is no one of them, whatever its date, which 
 
222 The Method of Henry James 
 
 does not suffer greatly by contrast with "The Portrait" 
 or even with "Roderick Hudson," in point of technique. 
 Everywhere in these experiments triumphs the bald and 
 direct manner of narration, to the great distress of any 
 reader who has learned from James the pleasure of 
 making things out for himself from the data furnished. 
 Such a reader is not flattered to be informed in the first 
 chapter of "The Europeans" that when Madame Miin- 
 ster came to Boston it was to seek her fortune; and he 
 is likely to be bored with the preliminary assurances in 
 regard to Doctor Sloper in "Washington Square" that 
 he was very witty and thoroughly honest, not to speak 
 of what further is vouchsafed in regard to the person 
 and character of the late Mrs. Sloper. But it is in "The 
 Bostonians" that the reader is called upon for the greatest 
 display of patience. For example, he is invited to make 
 the acquaintance of Miss Birdseye. Miss Birdseye is an 
 estimable woman, and her appearance and movements are 
 described with some suggestion of the humor of Dickens 
 where he introduces us to the lady so deeply interested 
 in Borrioboola-Gha. But we cannot imagine Dickens 
 so far forgetting the showman's art as to let us know, 
 of anyone, that she was "a confused, entangled, incon- 
 sequent, discursive old woman, whose charity began at 
 home and ended nowhere, whose credulity kept pace with 
 it, and who knew less about her fellow-creatures, if possi- 
 ble, after fifty years of humanitary zeal, than on the day 
 she had gone into the field to testify against the iniquity 
 of most arrangements."^ 
 
 Of the four stories in this group, all but one are laid 
 entirely in America ; and in that one, all the main charac- 
 ters are American tourists whose contact with the old 
 
 1 P. 27. 
 
Non-Canonical 223 
 
 world is of the most superficial sort. I will leave it to 
 the reader to draw a connection between these facts and 
 the other circumstance that, in all of these novels, the 
 people are rather dull and commonplace on the whole. 
 This was not from any unpatriotic intention on the part 
 of the author. In several cases, like those of Robert 
 Acton in "The Europeans" and Angela Vivian in "Con- 
 fidence," he wished us to think of his creature as clever 
 and interesting. And we know that he regarded the 
 Doctor in "Washington Square" as "very witty." Only 
 he failed to provide for these characters substantial 
 enough materials for them to exercise their wits upon. 
 There is no "idea" in any of these stories, with one pos- 
 sible exception. There is nothing in the situation worthy 
 of the fine interpretation or subtle strategy which these 
 characters are prepared to devote to it. Robert Acton has 
 simply to make out, as we are told in so many words, 
 whether the Baroness is a liar. Doctor Sloper has no 
 more delicate task than that of bullying his daughter. 
 Under these circumstances it is no wonder that the author 
 is constantly moving his post of observation as if the 
 impressions of the several characters were all of equal 
 •importance. But it follows from this want of steadiness 
 in the point of view that there is no growth of interest 
 as the story goes on. In every case the interest flags 
 toward the middle; and only in "Washington Square" 
 does the story come out strong and effective at the end. 
 
 (a) Confidence, The Bostonians, The Europeans 
 
 Least successful of all these stories is "Confidence." 
 This work saw the light almost at the same time as "The 
 Portrait," but no one will quarrel with Mr. James over 
 his failure to preserve it. It is a mild and rather flavor- 
 
224- The Method of Henry James 
 
 less tale of misunderstandings between young lovers. 
 Bernard Longueville, having been set by a friend the 
 task of reporting on the character of Angela Vivian, upon 
 whom his friend has sentimental designs, mistakes for 
 coquetry what is really a modest woman's inclination 
 to himself. His friend marries another shallower girl; 
 and when later Bernard discovers his own love for 
 Angela, he feels bound to disguise it. The story is 
 largely worked up out of the ensuing conflict between 
 love and honor, and has about as much relation to real 
 life as those romantic conflicts recorded in old French 
 plays and novels. The strength and quality of the senti- 
 ment, as well as the character of the complications, sug- 
 gest the light comedies of Marivaux, although it must be 
 confessed there is little suggestion of the delicate grace 
 and ingenuity of the French comedy. The dialogue is 
 often juvenile in effect, and well adapted to the taste of 
 very young readers ... in the years 1879 and '80 ! 
 
 Much more serious, as well as more pretentious, work 
 is that in "The Bostonians," a contemporary of "The 
 Princess Casamassima." But again Mr. James must be 
 applauded for his adverse judgment upon this novel, 
 -^^his story-might he said to have a theme. ■. It seems to 
 have been meant for an ironical picture, at the same time, 
 of feminism and of the Boston temper of mind. Earnest- 
 minded Beacon Street is typified by Olive Chancellor, 
 of the high-strung nerves, whose imagination is all taken 
 up with the immemorial sufferings and wrongs of women. 
 Boston as the begetter of fads and freaks is represented, 
 among others, by the humanitarian Miss Birdseye, the 
 professional Doctor Prance (of the same sex), the spirit- 
 ualist Tarrants. The antithesis to the Boston temper 
 
Non-Canonical 22^ 
 
 is furnished by Basil Ransome, the Mississippi cousin of 
 Olive, — ^anti-feminist and champion of nature and com- 
 mon sense. The bone of contention between the two 
 parties is Verena Tarrant, ingenue and "inspirational" 
 speaker on the wrongs and the merits of women. In 
 spite of the atmosphere of charlatanry in which she has 
 been bred, she is a girl of simple, sincere nature, well 
 worthy of the devotion of Olive and Basil. Olive longs 
 with all her heart to dedicate Verena to the cause, and to 
 prevent the catastrophe of love and marriage; whereas 
 Basil sees in her only the possibilities for personal and 
 domestic happiness. Basil wins out ; and in his triumph, 
 I suppose, we are shown the triumph of common sense, 
 or of natural law. 
 
 The demonstration is not very convincing. And the 
 process is often dull. 
 
 The first part of the story is fairly interesting, though 
 decidedly crude in comparison with the better work of 
 James. Satire is not his forte, nor humorous portraiture 
 of the Dickens order. The account of the South Boston 
 conventicle is full and conscientious, but rather heavy. 
 The same may be said of several descriptions in the 
 course of the book, in which the disciple of Balzac under- 
 takes to render in some detail the effect of American 
 architecture and urban vistas, giving "a collective impres- 
 sion of boards and tin and frozen earth, sheds and rotting 
 piles . . . loose fences, vacant lots, mounds of refuse."" 
 
 After the satirical and expository part begins the story 
 proper. It is not very exciting, consisting largely in a 
 perfunctory complication by means of clandestine meet- 
 ings, rival lovers, scheming widows. Still less interesting 
 is the concluding third of the book, in which we are 
 
 2 Pp. 174-175. 
 
226 The Method of Henry James 
 
 simply waiting for a definite announcement of the out- 
 come. We cannot be greatly in doubt as to what the 
 outcome is going to be. There are no perplexities of 
 psychology or situation to be resolved. The delay is occa- 
 sioned only, it seems, by the author's feeling that the 
 story should be prolonged on general principles, or — to 
 do him better justice — ^by a feeling on his part that he 
 must give us somehow a due sense of the lapse of time. 
 The concluding scene at the Music Hall is exciting enough 
 in conception, and might have been melodramatic in effect 
 if James had been capable of letting himself go. But that 
 is not conceivable; and a potentially melodramatic con- 
 clusion does not drown the memory of a story dragged 
 out to a tiresome length. 
 
 Much more entertaining is "The Europeans," which 
 makes no pretensions to a substantial treatment of its 
 subject. There are in this book several scenes of deli- 
 cious light comedy, arising from the opposing points of 
 view of the visitors and their American kin. The comedy 
 centers in the seventh chapter, in which the somewhat 
 light-minded young painter, Felix, exchanges views with 
 his grave and conscientious uncle, while the latter is sit- 
 ting reluctantly for his portrait. Most amusing is the 
 perplexity of Felix over the relations of his cousin, young 
 Clifford, and Lizzie Acton. Clifford, it will be recalled, 
 had been suspended from Harvard College for undue 
 indulgence in liquor. He is presumably a "dangerous" 
 young man. And Felix cannot understand how he can 
 be allowed such intimacy with the jeune fille unless they 
 are engaged. He is obviously Lizzie's beau, and Felix 
 is unwilling to assume the existence of anything so im- 
 proper as a "clandestine engagement." The worldly 
 young man might be supposed to be gently lecturing his 
 
Non-Canonical 227 
 
 senior on the proprieties of the situation. The comedy 
 reaches its height when FeHx innocently proposes that 
 Clifford be put under the civilizing influence of his sister, 
 Madame Miinster. Mr. Wentworth is greatly puzzled 
 and embarrassed by this suggestion, as he takes it, that 
 his son shall make love to a married woman — even though 
 her marriage may be only "morganatic"! "Ah," said 
 Felix, smiling, "of course she can't marry him. But she 
 will do what she can." "Doubtless he supposes," he said 
 to himself after this conversation, "that I desire, out of 
 fraternal benevolence, to procure for Eugenia the amuse- 
 ment of a flirtation — or, as he probably calls it, an intrigue 
 — with the too susceptible Clifford. It must be admitted 
 — and I have noticed it before — that nothing exceeds the 
 license occasionally taken by the imagination of very 
 rigid people."^ 
 
 James is quite happy throughout in his way of hitting 
 off the rigidities of these people. And he succeeds in 
 enlisting our sympathies in the effort of Gertrude Went- 
 worth to throw off the burden of an over-serious view 
 of life. There is here a pleasing study for the social con- 
 trast suggested by the title. But there is little more than 
 this. Life is touched only in those tentative preliminary 
 stages where its problems do not become pressing. A 
 typical James situation would arise only after the mar- 
 riage and migration of Gertrude, when her aspiration 
 towards happiness and gayety might be brought to the 
 test of experience. So that, while these pages undoubt- 
 edly contain much that is worth attention, we shall 
 probably agree with the author that the novel as a whole 
 is scarcely worth the double star signified by admittance 
 to the New York edition. 
 
 3 P. 149. 
 
228 The Method of Henry James 
 
 (b) Washington Square 
 
 The one instance in which we feel bound to demur 
 from the author's verdict is "Washington Square." And 
 this is the one case in which we have to distinguish 
 sharply between the distinctive and the successful. 
 "Washington Square" is anything but a typical work of 
 James. While we recognize the flavor of his writing in 
 individual passages, the technique on the whole is much 
 more suggestive of Mr. Howells than of the author of 
 "The Portrait" and "The Ambassadors." There is 
 scarcely one of the articles in our definition of the James 
 method which could here be applied without great modi- 
 fication. "Washington Square" is a very simple account 
 of the love affair of a very simple woman. It is indeed 
 an essential factor in the story of Catherine Sloper that 
 she had an exceptionally dull mind and a most limited 
 imagination; and one realizes at once how incompatible 
 that is with the kind of story-telling proper to the case 
 of Hyacinth Robinson or Fleda Vetch. Catherine is 
 anything but lacking in character and sensibility ; but 
 she has no active mental reaction to her situation. 
 Her strength is of the passive order, — a strength of resist- 
 ance, a capacity for suffering and silence. And it is no 
 small credit to the creator of Nanda Brookenham that 
 he has resisted all temptation to state the facts of Cath- 
 erine's story in any but the plainest of terms. Every- 
 thing is as simple, as bald if you like, as Catherine's own 
 statement to her lover on his return to her after many 
 years. "You treated me badly," said Catherine. 
 
 Catherine is in the beginning a very young girl, utterly 
 without social practice or competence; and the reader 
 is at first impressed with the thinness, almost the insip- 
 idity, of the record of her reactions, — her agitation on 
 
Non-Canonical 229 
 
 being introduced to the handsome young man, her naive 
 affirmation as to his tremendous refinement, her awkward 
 and unnecessary false declaration to her father that she 
 doesn't know the name of the person in question. We 
 are perhaps at first a little impatient. We feel cheated 
 at being paid in coin of such juvenile currency. Before 
 we have proceeded very far, however, we realize that 
 there is more than the usual measure of humanity in the 
 baldnesses and embarrassments of Catherine Sloper. Long 
 before the conclusion lends its sculpturesque roundness 
 and "plasticity" to her figure, we have become conscious 
 of something as peculiar and as piquant about this per- 
 sonality as the citrus flavor in orange or grapefruit 
 Such a piquancy seasons in particular the awkward inter- 
 views of Catherine with her formidable father, — that, for 
 example, in which he asks her ironically whether Morris 
 has proposed to her today. 
 
 This was just what she had been afraid he would say ; 
 and yet she had no answer ready. Of course she would 
 have liked to take it as a joke — as her father must have 
 meant it ; and yet she would have liked also, in denying 
 it, to be a little positive, a little sharp, so that he would 
 perhaps not ask the question again. She didn't like it — 
 it made her unhappy. But Catherine could never be 
 sharp ; and for a moment she only stood, with her hand 
 on the door-knob, looking at her satiric parent, and giving 
 a little laugh. 
 
 "Decidedly," said the Doctor to himself, "my daughter 
 is not brilliant!" 
 
 But he had no sooner made this reflection than Cath- 
 erine found something ; she had decided, on the whole, to 
 take the thing as a joke. 
 
 "Perhaps he will do it the next time," she exclaimed, 
 with a repetition of her laugh; and she quickly got out of 
 the room.* 
 
 * Pp. 46-47. 
 
2^0 The Method of Henry James 
 
 If we are in any doubt as to the exquisite humor and 
 pathos of this passage, our doubt is dispelled by the 
 simple beauty of the pictures with which the story closes. 
 Catherine's lover has proved the mercenary character of 
 his feeling by his retirement in the face of her father's 
 opposition. She has no illusions with regard to him ; but 
 she has the integrity of her own sentiment, and she stead- 
 fastly declines all opportunities of consoling herself for 
 her great disappointment. "From her own point of view 
 the facts of her career were that Morris Townsend had 
 trifled with her affection, and that her father had broken 
 its spring. Nothing could ever alter these facts; they 
 were always there, like her name, her age, her plain face. 
 . . . There was something dead in her life, and her 
 duty was to try to fill the void."° And so we trace the 
 course of her growth into a quaint and likable "maiden- 
 aunt to the younger portion of society." It is chiefly in 
 her quiet domestic setting that we see her in the end, — 
 seated night after night with her Aunt Lavinia in the 
 Washington Square parlor, the windows open to the 
 balcony, and the lamps lighted or dark according to the 
 state of the mercury. It is here that she had the last 
 meeting with her returned lover, when she declined to 
 see him any more since there was "no propriety in it — 
 no reason for it." It was here that, after his departure, 
 "picking up her morsel of fancy-work, she . . . seated 
 herself with it again — for life, as it were." 
 
 By the time we reach this point, the character of Cath- 
 erine has taken on substance out of all proportion to the 
 length of the narrative. And this is true to a less degree 
 of Washington Square itself. Of all the novels in which 
 James endeavors to fix some aspect of "the American 
 
 5 P. 244. 
 
Non-Canonical 2^1 
 
 scene," this is the only one in which he approaches suc- 
 cess. And here the success derives not from any com- 
 pleteness or intensity in the representation, but from 
 a certain quiet persuasiveness about the tone of the pic- 
 ture. Perhaps this is largely due to the fond piety of 
 the references to a neighborhood so familiar to the 
 author's childhood, a piety expressed in passages sug- 
 gesting the manner of earlier Victorian romancers or 
 of Georgian essayists. 
 
 I know not whether it is owing to the tenderness 
 of early associations, but this portion of New York 
 appears to many persons the most delectable. It has a 
 kind of established repose which is not of frequent occur- 
 rence in other quarters of the long, shrill city; it has a 
 riper, richer, more honorable look than any of the upper 
 ramifications of the great longitudinal thoroughfare — 
 the look of having had something of a social history. 
 It was here, as you might have been informed on good 
 authority, that you had come into a world which appeared 
 to oflfer a variety of sources of interest ; it was here that 
 your grandmother lived, in venerable solitude, and dis- 
 pensed a hospitality which commended itself alike to the 
 infant imagination and the infant palate ; it was here that 
 you took your first walks abroad, following the nursery- 
 maid with unequal step, and sniffing the strange odor of 
 the ailanthus trees which at that time formed the principal 
 umbrage of the Square, and diffused an aroma that you 
 were not yet critical enough to dislike as it deserved; it 
 was here, finally, that your first school, kept by a broad- 
 bosomed, broad-based old lady with a ferule, who was 
 always having tea in a blue cup, with a saucer that didn't 
 match, enlarged the circle both of your observations and 
 your sensations. It was here, at any rate, that my heroine 
 spent many years of her life ; which is my excuse for this 
 topographical parenthesis.* 
 
 » Pp. 23-24. 
 
2^2 The Method of Henry James 
 
 There will be found readers to prefer this passage of 
 reminiscent sentiment to the more involved and elaborate 
 disquisitions of "A Small Boy and Others." Like the 
 rest of the novel, it has escaped that revision which was 
 the price exacted for admission to the canon. The whole 
 narrative wears the same old-fashioned garb in which it 
 first appeared. And it is for once a piece of good luck 
 not to have had the language brought up to date. There 
 is a certain quaintness of formality about the expression 
 that is entirely in keeping with the general tone of the 
 book. Anyone reading it in the edition of 1881, published 
 by Harpers, and illustrated by George Du Maurier, will 
 take pleasure in the suitability of the drawings to the style 
 of the text. There is a distinction, as well as the quaint- 
 ness, about them both, which does justice to the subject. 
 I cannot believe that the lovers of James will allow this 
 story to sink into the oblivion to which the author con- 
 signed it. It is anything but a good example of the 
 method which he later made so much his own. But it is 
 a charming memento of a phase through which he passed 
 on the way to his more distinctive performance. 
 
IV 
 ACHIEVEMENT: THE SPOlt^ OF POYNTON 
 
 The first absolutely pure example of the James method 
 was "The Spoils of Poynton," published in 1896. This 
 book has all the "marks." And as no novel before it had 
 shown so many of the distinctive traits in such perfection, 
 in none had they been blent so closely, so as to work 
 together and reinforce one another. Nowhere in his 
 earlier writing does the "figure in the carpet" come out 
 so distinct, simple and entire. The "idea" stands without 
 rival as a means of bringing out the varying qualities of 
 subjective experience. In showing the attitudes of differ- 
 ent people towards precious "Things," the gamut is run 
 through all degrees from mere undiscerning vulgarity up 
 to the finest spiritual insight. The idea is made admirably - 
 concrete, converted beautifully into "picture," in the 
 particular question of the "Spoils," which make here the 
 touchstone of character. But if the central subject of the 
 picture is Poynton and the Spoils, the author realized 
 that he must have for interpreter some being more con- 
 scious and articulate; and he chose for this the person 
 most capable of appreciating the idea. Never before had 
 he managed so happily this difficult business ; never before 
 had he kept so strictly within the limits of the chosen 
 consciousness. But it is perhaps most of all in the 
 dialogue, linked together by the unfailing participation 
 of'Fleda, that one feels the break with the earlier man- 
 ner: a dialogue so little discursive, confining itself so 
 
2^4 The Method of Henry James 
 
 strictly to the matter in hand, and in regard to this so 
 tirelessly inquisitive, so finespun and close-wrought. 
 
 The great point is that, for the first time in a story 
 of this length, James was confining himself rigorously " 
 to the matter in hand, content to forego all other sources 
 of entertainment, determined to seek all variety within 
 the theme itself. For the first time he was breaking 
 completely with the tradition of the English novel, which 
 had been made to relate so much that was irrelevant, to 
 provide so copious and miscellaneous a banquet. 
 
 The question naturally arises as to how he came at this 
 particular moment to make the plunge, as to why matu- 
 rity of method appears so suddenly with "The Spoils 
 of Poynton." In considering this question we have to 
 take into account the fact that James was a writer of 
 short stories as well as of novels. Indeed, at the time 
 when he wrote "Poynton," he had produced nothing but 
 short stories for more than half a dozen years. "Poyn- 
 ton" is itself, for that matter, a very short novel. It is 
 not twice as long as "The Turn of the Screw." It is 
 only about half the length of "Roderick Hudson" and 
 one-third that of "The Tragic Muse." 
 
 Now it is obvious that the short story is nothing with- 
 out the benefit of concentration and elimination. There 
 is no room for copiousness and variety. There is no 
 room for a shifting point of view, for discursive dialogue, 
 for the elaboration of anything but the matter in hand. 
 And so it is natural that James should have arrived first 
 in the short story at the economy and intensiveness of 
 treatment which became his ideals for the novel as well. 
 This was actually the case; and short stories like "The 
 Altar of the the Dead" (1895), "The Pupil" and "The 
 Chaperon" (both 1891), we may regard in the light of 
 
Achievement: The Spoils of Poynton 235 
 
 exercises in preparation for "The Awkward Age" and 
 "The Golden Bowl." 
 
 All the. more so as the short stories of James, like his 
 novels, even more than the earlier novels, tend to sub-j 
 ordinate narrative proper to human portraiture. As hel 
 puts it himself in one of his prefaces, "A short story, to 
 my sense and as the term is used in magazines, has to 
 choose between being either an anecdote or a picture 
 and can play its part strictly according to its kind. I 
 rejoice in the anecdote, but I revel in the picture." And 
 then he goes on to explain the points of a good picture in 
 terms strongly suggesting the technique of the later 
 novels, dwelling on that "true grave dose consistency 
 in which parts hang together even as the interweavings 
 of a tapestry."^ While the earlier novels tend likewise 
 to show as pictures, it is pictures with a larger, looser 
 composition than the short story can ever allow itself. 
 
 If then we suppose that the author of "Poynton" began 
 with the intention of writing a short story, and that it 
 simply expanded beyond the compass of that form, we 
 understand how he first came to realize fully in the longer 
 form the "true grave close c onsisten cy" natural to the 
 briefer. And this supposition we find confirmed when 
 we turn to the preface and read that "Poynton" was 
 intended to complete a trio of short stories of which two 
 members had already appeared in the "Atlantic." Mr. 
 James is rather amusing in his account of the "editorial 
 ruefulness" over the embarrassing amplitude taken on by 
 a story confidently expected to be short.'' This subject 
 simply proved to be larger than it first appeared. It de- 
 clined to be treated as a hint, an aspect, an episode. How- 
 ever limited the number of characters, it insisted on being 
 
 ^Vol. X, p. xxiv. 
 2 Id., p. X. 
 
2S6 The Method of Henry James 
 
 treated as the record of a life, the history of a soul. It 
 was no doubt the mental capacity of Fleda Vetch that was 
 responsible for this expansion. Without h^tjetespreta- 
 tion t he circumstances might have done well for a short 
 story ; without this, the thing would be an anecdote. But 
 without her interpretation we can hardly conceive it as 
 a James story of any length. 
 
 If it was by accident, as it were, that James came to 
 extend to the novel certain articles of method already 
 applied in the short story, there is little doubt that he 
 realized at once what had happened and how much it 
 made for his "game." It is certain that he never yielded 
 an inch of the ground he had gained.^ In the following 
 years the same method was applied in the still longer 
 stories of "What Maisie Knew" and "The Awkward 
 Age," and so without a break in the full-length two-vol- 
 ume novels of his final period. And thus it was the short 
 story helped him to full possession and mastery of his 
 method in the novel. 
 
 ' We have to make an exception of "The Other House," writ- 
 ten immediately after "Pojmton" in 1896. This, as we have seen 
 in the chapter on "Drama," is a very special case. James refers 
 slightingly to it in the preface to Vol. X, p. xi, giving the impres- 
 sion that it was written hurriedly and without enthusiasm. 
 
V 
 TECHNICAL EXERCISES 
 
 So far from being unaware of what he had done in 
 "The Spoils of Poynton," one may observe in James, in 
 the half dozen years that followed, a rather acute con- 
 sciousness' of his momentous discovery. He shows a 
 disposition to make the most of it, to push to its furthest 
 limits the technique he had acquired by dint of such long- 
 continued practice and exploration. The novels of this 
 period, taken as a whole, give the impression of being, 
 to a considerable extent, technical exercises. They are 
 not experiments towards a method, like the works dis- 
 cussed in Chapter III, like, for that matter, all the novels 
 turned out before "Poynton." The several points of the 
 method are now well understood and established as defi- 
 nite rules of procedure. These books, written at the 
 height of the author's self-consciousness, are rather 
 experiments with a method. He wants to put it through 
 its paces, to draw out all its latent possibilities, to make 
 application of it in ways the most curious and recherchS. 
 It is accordingly not surprising that he impresses one as 
 taken up with his technique almost more than with his 
 subject, and that some at least of the novels of this period 
 strike the reader — ^that one of them apparently struck 
 James himself — as technical excesses. 
 
 The works in question are "What Maisie Knew," "The 
 Awkward Age" and "The Sacred Fount," the first mak- 
 ing its appearance in 1897, the last in 1901. In connec- 
 tion with "The Awkward Age," we can most conveniently 
 
238 The Method of Henry James 
 
 discuss "The Outcry," the la^t of all the novels of James,^ 
 much later in date but showing a second application of 
 the same technical device. 
 
 (a) What Maisie Knew 
 
 "What Maisie Knew" is most remarkable technically, 
 as we have seen, for the consistency with which the point 
 of view is limited to the consciousness of a young girl 
 without preventing us from following a story full of 
 incident and human nature far beyond the comprehension 
 of a child. There is no doubt of the success with which 
 James carries out the difficult program he sets himself 
 in this book. We have no trouble following the story 
 of Maisie's perverse parents and her misguided step- 
 parents. We never call in question the truth of Maisie's 
 experience, either as to the facts or as to her rather 
 uncanny understanding of them. The whole situation is 
 reproduced by the author's imagination with a fidelity to 
 life and a vividness of realization possible only to high 
 poetic genius. 
 
 Arid yet we cannot feel that this is one of the most 
 important humanly of the novels of James. And when 
 we seek for the grounds of this persuasion, we find them 
 in the very limitations entailed by this technically so 
 fascinating program. The choice of Maisie for the 
 "register" of these occurrences makes impossible the 
 rendering of their real significance, — ^their significance 
 either for the grown-up persons taking part, or their 
 significance (if this might be distinguished from the 
 other) for an author more coolly aware of the broad 
 
 ^ That is, the last complete novel, and the last to be published 
 during his lifetime. 
 
Technical Exercises 239 
 
 moral bearings of what is done and suffered. Only in the 
 concluding scenes do we have any approach to an ade- 
 quately interpretative record of events as they affect the 
 principal — the grown-up — participants. And do we, on 
 the other hand, have the story of Maisie herself ? Maisie 
 herself has really no story. She is hardly more than an 
 observer eagerly following from her side-box the enthrall- 
 ing spectacle of the stage. And while, like any preco- 
 cious child, she takes in much more of the spectacle than 
 her elders had reckoned on, she really does not under- 
 stand what she sees, in at all the sense in which it is 
 meant by the grown-ups. She takes great pride in letting 
 it be seen how much she "knows," and Mrs. Wix and 
 Sir Claude are actually "taken in" by what seems to be 
 her eventual development of a "moral sense" like their 
 own. But we are not taken in : we realize that, ^so far 
 as the moral sense they have in mind is concerned, she 
 has not the elementary knowledge on which it must be 
 grounded ; jand if she says the right words at the right 
 time, that is because she is the cleverest of little parrots, 
 much concerned to maintain her professional reputation 
 for knowingness. Her mental process, thanks to the 
 author's conscientious regard for truth, remains that of a 
 child; and for that very reason the book cannot carry 
 the weight carried by those in which we are invited to 
 follow the mental process of a Fleda Vetch or an Isabel 
 Archer, t So that we have adequately rendered in "Maisie" 
 neither a story nor a serious subjective experience, j 
 
 What is rendered, and with the surest art, is always 
 the irony and the pathos of Maisie's connection with 
 the ugly circumstances of the history^ Maisie's extreme 
 knowingness is never so great as to prevent her from 
 passing comments that show her profound ignorance 
 
240 The Method of Henry James 
 
 of the troublesome ways of sex and of the rules laid 
 down by grown-ups for the better regulation of the game. 
 Nothing is more touching than her eagerness to claim 
 responsibility for the vulgar relation of her step-parents. 
 She is always reminding Sir Claude and Mrs. Beale that 
 it was Maisie who brought them together.^ By this means 
 she is underlining for the author the inherent irony of 
 the whole situation, and adding one more irony, that of 
 her own naive joy in the loves of the two step-parents 
 for whom she has so much affection. The very summit 
 of heaped-up ironies is reached in the attempt of the 
 childish Mrs. Wix to inoculate the poor little creature 
 with a "moral sense." Like everybody else, she wishes 
 Maisie to know as little as possible of men and women 
 and the social laws governing their relations, and at the 
 same time expects her instinctively to condemn any in- 
 fringement of the said conventions. What renders most 
 amusing the long arguments with Mrs. Wix as to the 
 "freedom" of Sir Qaude and Mrs. Beale to live together 
 is Maisie's anxiety not to appear "simple."* As for 
 pathos, everything conspires to make touching the situa- 
 tion of little orphaned, bewildered Maisie, called upon 
 so early, and with such entire want of proper instruction, 
 to grapple with problems much too hard even for her 
 elders. She cannot understand why Mrs. Beale must be 
 branded as bad. "She's beautiful and I love her! I 
 love her and she's beautiful!" Mrs. Wix cannot make 
 her see how the relation is made more vulgar when one 
 of the persons involved gives money to the other. That 
 would seem to her to indicate simply the generosity of 
 the o;ie who pays. And then if Sir Claude does pay 
 
 2 See, for example, p. 64 (Vol. XI). 
 
 3 P. 287. 
 
Technical Exercises 241 
 
 Mrs. Beale as the Countess pays her father, isn't it equally 
 true that Mrs. Wix herself receives her wages from Sir 
 Qaude ? 
 
 "Then doesn't he pay you too?" her unhappy charge 
 demanded. At this she bounded in her place. "Oh you 
 incredible little waif !" She brought it out with a wail of 
 violence; after which, with another convulsion, she 
 marched straight away. 
 
 Maisie dropped back on the bench and burst into sobs.* 
 
 If we need any further assurance that Maisie is actually 
 a little girl it is in the proof she offers, the very next day, 
 of her Tightness of feeling. If she thought Mrs. Beale 
 was unkind to Sir Claude, she could think of one thing 
 she would do in the premises. She'd kill her, says Maisie. 
 "That at least, she hoped, would guarantee her moral 
 sense."" 
 
 Apart from this tangled web of perplexities, the story 
 of Maisie is crowded with appeal the most simply human. 
 Maisie is a little girl no less charming than she is real, 
 beautiful in the desperation with which her affection 
 clings to a father and mother whom everybody agrees to 
 condemn, as well as in her loyalty to those who have 
 shown themselves more worthy of her love. It is clear 
 that the author has a regular tendre for this daughter of 
 his fancy. It is a feeling strong enough to shake him out 
 of his editorial reserve for once and bring him right up 
 with the first person singular and the sign of exclamation. 
 "Oh, decidedly," he exclaims at a certain juncture, "I 
 shall never get you to believe the number of things she 
 
 * P. 277. 
 sp. 288. 
 
24-2 The Method of Henry James 
 
 saw and the number of secrets she discovered !"° James 
 has so thoroughly identified himself with the little lady — 
 for she is a lady! — ^that he reproduces for us the very 
 air of wonder with which all persons and things are 
 invested by the large round eyes of childhood. We 
 lose with him and Maisie the sense of proportion that 
 for grown people makes distinction between the big and 
 the little, and everything seen is seen in all the importance 
 and intensity, all the thrilling immediacy, of a child's 
 vision. It would take us much too far if I should yield 
 to my desire to review the good things in the history of 
 Maisie. I must be content to remind the reader of but 
 one occasion, that on which she and Sir Claude were tak- 
 ing tea and buns at "a place in Baker Street," when, 
 at the time of reckoning. Sir Claude too thoughtlessly 
 assumed, and aloud so as to be overheard by the waitress, 
 that Maisie had been capable of consuming no less than 
 five buns. Sir Claude was evidently unaware of the 
 proprieties in these things, but Maisie was only too 
 acutely aware of them. " 'How can you ?' Maisie de- 
 manded, crimson under the eye of the young woman who 
 had stepped to their board. 'I've had three.' "^ 
 
 But however many good things there may be in 
 "Maisie," and however true to life, the leading impres- 
 sion made by the book is still that of the author's clever- 
 ness in the working out of his scheme. Every time 
 Maisie comes up with another of her blessed naive re- 
 marks, every time her inevitable incredible simplicity sets 
 off like red fire the irony of the situation in its newest 
 turn, we feel — well, we feel like spectators present at the 
 setting off of some ingenious feu d'artifice. 
 
 « P. 205. 
 ■' P. 116. 
 
Technical Exercises 243 
 
 (b) The Awkward Age 
 
 Still more formidable an undertaking, technically, 
 was "The Awkward Age," — a kind of triple exercise, 
 one gathers, in idea, dialogue and point of view. The 
 theme of the book was "the difference made in certain 
 friendly houses and for certain flourishing mothers by 
 the . . . coming to the forefront of some vague slip of 
 a daughter,"* the difference, namely, in the character of 
 the fireside talk, which had been more free in its range 
 than is compatible with the presence of the jeune fille. 
 Of course this abstract theme must be dramatized ; there 
 must be characters, a plot, and above all dialogue. Mr. 
 James explains the design upon which he worked in this 
 matter, taking for his model the clever dialogues of 
 "Gyp," reducing explanations to the minimum, and un- 
 dertaking to produce a novel nearly as objective as a play. 
 This proved to be something of a mistake. The American 
 author overlooked the enormous difference between his 
 material and that of his French model, who is a mere 
 witty parrot of external "manners." These are indeed 
 capable of being rendered in simple dialogue; which is 
 obviously not true of the intricate human relations in- 
 volved in a story like "The Awkward Age." 
 
 We have glanced in an earlier chapter at the objectivity 
 of view here cultivated by James. He had confined 
 himself, for the fun of it, to the "scene" pure and simple. 
 He would never undertake to give us any information 
 even as to the present scene other than what the partici- 
 pants shared or what might have been gathered by a 
 "supposititious spectator," "an observer disposed to inter- 
 
 8 Vol. IX, p. vi. 
 
244 T^^ Method of Henry James 
 
 pret the scene."° If he has frequent resort to such a 
 spectator, by this very confession of weakness, as he 
 might put it, he is calling attention to the rigor of his 
 self-restraint. The point is that, while he is willing to 
 let us know everything that actually becomes apparent 
 during a particular scene, he is steadfastly refusing to 
 "go behind" the appearances. His self-denial is some- 
 times set in higher relief by his putting his reading of 
 appearances in the interrogative form, as not wishing to 
 take responsibility for anything beyond the scope of the 
 eyes. "Mr. Longdon looked the noble lady . . . straight 
 in the face, and who can tell whether or no she acutely 
 guessed from his expression that he recognised this par- 
 ticular junction as written on the page of his doom ?"" 
 
 That these devices are deliberate and that the author 
 takes pride in the technical ingenuity thus displayed is 
 evident at every turn. It will suffice to repeat his boast 
 on one occasion — for it amounts to a boast — ^that "as Mr. 
 Van himself couldn't have expressed at any subsequent 
 time to any interested friend the particular effect upon 
 him of the tone of these words his chronicler takes 
 advantage of the fact not to pretend to a greater intelli- 
 gence — to limit himself on the contrary to the simple 
 statement that they produced in Mr. Van's cheek a flush 
 just discernible."^^ 
 
 As a matter of fact, the narrative, as James intended, 
 is pretty closely confined to what is said, and indications 
 of the manner in which remarks are delivered and 
 received are not so much more frequent than in the 
 
 8 Pp. 323 and 130, respectively. The word spectator recurs on 
 pp. 149, 215, 229, 317, 319, 400, 424, 449; the word observer, or 
 something to the same effect, on 142, 238, 269, 310, 319, 344. 
 
 w P. 234. 
 
 " Pp. 211-212. 
 
Technical Exercises 245 
 
 characteristic play of the present time. Among the many 
 other suggestions of dramatic technique is the care with 
 which the author designates the positions of his actors on 
 the stage. This is most called for of course in scenes 
 taking in a considerable number of characters, like the 
 critical scene at Mrs. Grendon's. There we read at one 
 point that "the new recruits to the circle, Tishy and 
 Nanda and Mr. Cashmore, Lady Fanny and Harold . . . 
 ended by enlarging it, with mutual accommodation and 
 aid, to a pleasant talkative ring. . . . Tishy was nearest 
 Mr. Longdon, and Nanda, still flanked by Mr. Cash- 
 more, between that gentleman and his wife, who had 
 Harold on her other side. Edward Brookenham was 
 neighboured by his son and by Vanderbank. . . ."" 
 
 By such means James has provided well for the objec- 
 tivity, the plastic realism of the scene. But anyone famil- 
 iar with the kind of ideas which it is his wont to convey, 
 with the intense subjectivity of his present theme, will 
 realize the enormous effrontery of his undertaking to con- 
 vey it in a vehicle so limited. All the more so as James 
 did not call to his help certain of the devices still open to 
 him, such as that of the confidante. There is here no 
 Maria Gostrey, no Mrs. Assingham, to add her outside 
 interpretation of the situation to that vouchsafed in the 
 talk of the characters most involved. It is true that the 
 later scenes, in the usual manner of James, throw light at 
 last upon the earlier ones. But it is a long wait from the 
 sixth book to the ninth — so long one must stay for an 
 explanation of the policy, and so of the character, of 
 Mrs. Brook. 
 
 We are dealing here with people whose motives 
 are, if possible, still further removed from the ordinary 
 
 12 Pp. 423-424. 
 
246 The Method of Henry James 
 
 than is usual in James, and who are at any rate still 
 more sensitive than usual to the imputation of vul- 
 garity. There is one anxious moment in which Mrs. 
 Brook, whose own temptation is the strongest of any of 
 them, exclaims to Vanderbank, "Let us not, for God's 
 sake, be vulgar — we haven't yet, bad as it is, come to 
 that."^^ And there are perhaps a dozen places in which 
 the various members of her circle show their horror of 
 this contingency.^* Vanderbank assures her that she is 
 quite free from vulgarity. "Oh, I know that there are 
 things you don't put to me!" If not putting things to 
 one another is what constitutes refinement, it is obvious 
 how little light there can be for the reader in the talk 
 of people who are never vulgar. If it were not for the 
 occasional running amuck of the Duchess — a foreign 
 Duchess, bien entendu — we should be left indeed in dark- 
 ness. 
 
 But not merely are the motives of a strangeness, and 
 strangely veiled by the requirements of good taste, they 
 are, when we take into account the whole story, combined 
 in a pattern whose complexity contributes greatly to our 
 bewilderment. It is not only Mrs. Brook who can boast 
 a strategy, in her admirable cause of keeping together 
 her "saloon," maintaining her "intellectual habits," and 
 at the same time providing for her difficult daughter and 
 so confounding the theories of the Duchess. It turns 
 out the difficult daughter has a strategy, if you please, 
 as fine and as complicated as her mother's and not over- 
 looking the disposition of her mother, either, after she 
 has duly- disposed of Mitchy and Aggie, of the Grendons 
 and the Cashmores, and of Mr. Longdon. It is like one 
 
 w P. 446. 
 
 " For example, pp. 323, 329, 339, 430, 460. 
 
Technical Exercises 24^ 
 
 of those games with blocks so appealing to youngsters, 
 in which, piece by piece, one structure is taken down and 
 a new structure set up accounting exactly for every block 
 taken from the first. If Nanda takes Mitchy from her 
 mother's coterie, she makes it up by restoring "Aggie," 
 who is a still better subject for her mother's genius. If 
 she deprives Mitchy of the hope of having herself for 
 wife, she makes it up to him by establishing herself in 
 the still more interesting relation of counsellor and friend. 
 If she proves totally unable to sustain comparison with 
 her admired grandmother, that turns out to be the very 
 tie that attaches most closely to her the grandmother's 
 worshipper and his fortune. And it is beautiful to see 
 how in these evolutions, and in others too numerous to 
 mention, Nanda and her mother seem to work together, 
 without communication, to an end equally satisfactory 
 to both. It is true that Nanda cannot have the man she 
 loves. But that somehow seems to have been ruled out 
 from the start ; Nanda declares herself to be one of those 
 strange creatures who "positively like to love in vain."^" 
 The great thing appears to be, not to have everyone 
 happy — ^that is perhaps too absurdly vulgar — ^but to have 
 every one "squared."^' But it might give an idea rather 
 of simplicity than of complexity if I dwelt too heavily 
 upon this reversed pattern of the plot and the relations 
 of Nanda and Mrs. Brook. These are great strategists ; 
 but the reader has to reckon also with the Duchess, and 
 with the unknown quantities represented by Mitchy and 
 Vanderbank and Mr. Longdon. 
 
 And the worst of it is that, among all these competitors, 
 the reader is at a loss to know where to invest his sympa- 
 
 " P. 359. 
 
 ".For example, pp. 523, 525. 
 
2^8 The Method of Henry James 
 
 thies. This is an almost fatal oversight in a novel, not to 
 give the reader better direction. It arises here, I think, 
 from the author's preoccupation with technique. He is 
 so largely absorbed in his game of illuminating that cen- 
 tral idea by means of those "lamps" that form a ring 
 about it.'^' How is he to show us which of these lamps 
 to take for our guiding star? He has cut himself off 
 from his usual means of indicating his bias by the choice 
 of a personal point of view. As a matter of fact, the 
 work outgrew his original intention, as he tells in the 
 preface. From a series of illustrative dialogues, it grew 
 into a story. But the author seems not sufficiently to 
 have realized this while the story was in progress. The 
 subject was being treated minutely and to his satisfac- 
 tion; and the subject did not require the particular 
 salience of one or a small number of characters. But the 
 story does require the dominance of special characters 
 who engage our interest. And in "The Awkward Age" 
 the story hardly gets itself started in this sense before 
 the seventh book. Not till then are we confident that 
 the heroine is Nanda Brookenham. And even then she 
 does not continue steadily to hold the center of the stage. 
 And so the story forfeits that intensity of appeal which 
 goes with our special concern for some particular person 
 . or group. It fails to take hold of us emotionally. We are 
 deeply interested through our intelligence, our curiosity. 
 But we do not really take stock in these people as human 
 beings laboring under the strain of life. We are not 
 made to feel how much they care. We are more im- 
 pressed with their self-consciousness, — the pride they 
 take in being "wonderful." 
 
 Mr. James was very well satisfied, on review, with 
 
 *■' See chapter on "Idea." 
 
Technical Exercises 249 
 
 his work in this book, — with its "exemplary closeness," 
 with "the quantity of meaning and the number of inten- 
 tions, the extent of ground for interest, as I may call it, 
 that I have succeeded in working scenically, yet without 
 loss of sharpness, clearness or 'atmosphere,' into each 
 of my illuminating Occasions."^* And he was quite right. 
 There is perhaps no novel that offers greater store of 
 satisfactions to any reader who will dig for them. But 
 we cannot regard any novel as supremely good in which 
 one has to dig so for what one gets, and where one's 
 satisfactions are so often in the recognition of the 
 author's cleverness. James takes pride in the fact that 
 one cannot distinguish, in this book, form and substance : 
 it is impossible to say "where one of these elements ends 
 and the other begins."^' This may be so: but with the 
 reader, at any rate, the impression that remains is very 
 largely that of form; not form without substance, but 
 form dominating or even bullying its inseparable twin. 
 
 (c) The Outcry 
 
 It is interesting to note that once again before he laid 
 down his pen James tried his hand at a novel written 
 on the lines of a play. The dramatic form is even more 
 marked in "The Outcry" than in "The Awkward Age." 
 The three parts correspond exactly to the three acts of a 
 modem play. Each part rises invariably to a good theat- 
 rical climax for the curtain. The scenes, or numbered 
 sections, are distinguished by a mere variation of dra- 
 matis persona within an identical setting, certain charac- 
 ters giving place to others on a stage that is never left 
 vacant. And objectivity of treatment is as carefully 
 
 18 P. xxii. 
 18 P. xxii. 
 
3^0 The Method of Henry James 
 
 maintained as in "The Awkward Age," and by the same 
 devices. In this case, however, the dramatic treatment 
 is perfectly suited to the subject-matter, and whether as 
 novel or play, the story is "got across" with entire suc- 
 cess. In each act there is something at issue sufficiently 
 objective and material for easy presentation on the stage. 
 In both the first two, indeed, the climax consists in 
 nothing less stagey than a quarrel between the heroine 
 and her father — in one case, her suitor too — in which 
 she flings defiance at her formidable parent. There is, 
 to be sure, an interesting and characteristic theme, relat- 
 ing to the honorable obligation of noble families who 
 possess great art treasures not to let them be lost to 
 their country. And the changes are rung in a manner 
 worthy of James on the freakish varieties assumed by 
 the sense of honor. But there is nothing about the idea 
 requiring development; there is no occasion for a close 
 following of the mental evolutions of the heroine. As a 
 consequence, the story is at once much more successful 
 and much less important than "The Awkward Age." 
 And while it is a book that would easily get itself readers 
 among the less discerning, its interest for students and 
 devotees of James is almost wholly technical. 
 
 (d) The Sacred Fount 
 
 We cannot be sure what disposition Mr. James would 
 have made of "The Outcry" had it been in print at the 
 time he brought his stories together. "The Sacred 
 Fount" we know he rejected, and so presumably branded 
 as not one of his first-class productions. It seems not 
 unlikely that this judgment was based on some feeling 
 that the book was rather too simply what I have called 
 a technical exercise. It is much more simply and ob- 
 
Technical Exercises 251 
 
 viously that than any of the other novels I have dis- 
 cussed. 
 
 It is an extremely interesting idea from which he takes 
 his start, and one that no doubt corresponds to something 
 profoundly true in human nature, — ^the idea that, between 
 man and woman, one party to the relation is liable to 
 pay for the happiness, the vitality, the efflorescence, of 
 the other. Every human relation, it may be, has some- 
 what the character of a struggle for life, in which one 
 gains at the expense of the other. This would be a fact 
 most rich in material for drama, for tragedy indeed ; and 
 it is strange that not more has been made of it in the type 
 of fiction represented by the novels of James. But true 
 and serious as was his subject-matter, James seems for 
 once to have but superficially conceived its possibilities. 
 
 Mr. James may well have felt that he was here be- 
 trayed by that excessive love of symmetrical patterns 
 in the disposition of his human units that is so constantly 
 cropping out, especially in his later period. It was this 
 same love of patterns which determined the complicated 
 symmetries and coincidences of the plot of "Maisie"; 
 the remarriage of both unparental parents, the love- 
 affair between the step-parents thus introduced, the 
 repeated infidelity of the original guardians of Maisie, 
 leaving "free" the adoptive guardians to pursue their own 
 relation. Maisie's passion for "squaring" everybody — 
 that is, for disposing happily of everybody in some rela- 
 tion that restores the balance of love and self-respect — 
 corresponds to the similar sense for decent equilibrium 
 which forms the excuse of Charlotte and Amerigo in 
 "The Golden Bowl." We have seen what a genius for 
 such arrangements was Nanda Brookenham's. The same 
 instinct for patterns — and for shifting patterns — is shown 
 
2$3 The Method of Henry James 
 
 in the reversal of the roles of Chad and Strether in "The 
 Ambassadors," which is so neatly and thoroughly worked 
 out. And other instances may occur to a reader suffi- 
 ciently familiar with the stories of James. 
 
 In the case of "The Sacred Fount" it is easy to follow 
 the process of growth of the amazing figure from the 
 original germ-idea. We are present at a week-end party 
 where, by assumption, all persons concerned in the psycho- 
 logical problem are in evidence. We have had enunciated 
 the principle of "the sacred fount," and one instance is 
 given us at the start, involving the persons A and B. If 
 the principle holds for one couple, why not for another? 
 X is to Y as A is to B. We observe a third person D 
 who exhibits the same symptoms as B. Only, to make the 
 pattern more interesting, D is a woman where B is a man. 
 It is naturally a principle that works without prejudice 
 of sex. We have then the equation 
 
 X :D ::A :B 
 
 A, B and D being known quantities, what is X? or, in 
 this particular equation, who is X? There chance to be 
 more than one person present who fill the conditions, or 
 at least two opinions prevail as to which person fills them 
 best; and a debate ensues. "I" hold a brief for C, and 
 my perfect equation reads 
 
 C :D ::A :B 
 
 There arise several minor considerations of great fas- 
 cination. We cannot go into more than one of these. 
 It appears that B and D are involved in a special relation 
 distinct from the main relation of each. What'can it be 
 but that of two persons suffering from the same malady — 
 two persons equally drained of their vitality by the part- 
 
Technical Exercises 253 
 
 ner who draws life from the common waters of the sacred 
 fount ? They come together for mutual comfort. Would 
 it not be natural, then, to look for a similar connection 
 between A and C ? The beneficiaries of the relations so 
 damaging to B and D may be expected to make common 
 cause for the defense and disguisement of their own 
 position. And such an entente seems to "me" to be 
 actually in existence. So that I have the interesting 
 secondary equation, 
 
 A :C ::B :D 
 
 And according to my psychologic algebra, the demonstra- 
 tion of the second equation is a further confirmation of 
 the first. 
 
 But I have not been allowed to carry out these demon- 
 strations without vigorous dispute. For there has been 
 present from the beginning a most troublesome compli- 
 cating factor. One of the persons to the debate is one 
 of the "quantities" of my equations ; and this person has 
 excellent reasons for denying the truth of my contentions 
 as soon as she realizes where they are leading us. So 
 that she soon begins a campaign for demolishing the facts 
 on which I base my contentions. All the latter part of 
 the discussion is taken up with the presentation of evi- 
 dence on one side or the other for supporting the two 
 rival hypotheses. A bewildering display of ingenuity 
 accompanies the completion of the two perfect and corre- 
 sponding structures reared by the two debaters. 
 
 Not less remarkable than the fascination of this game 
 is its artificiality. The original idea has been entirely lost 
 sight of save as the chess-board on which Mrs. Briss and 
 "I" play our game. There has been no real study of the 
 problem in human relations save from the outside, as 
 
254 The Method of Henry James 
 
 regards its susceptibility to mathematical manipulation. 
 Of course it is inevitable that in any dialogue of James 
 there should be*no end of light thrown on various aspects 
 of human nature. But it must have been as clear to him 
 as it is to his readers how totally, in this book, he failed 
 to develop the idea of the "sacred fount." 
 
 It is no wonder that readers of "The Portrait" and 
 "The Tragic Muse," let alone "Daisy Miller" and "The 
 American," should have been somewhat taken aback by 
 these exhibitions of virtuosity with which James intro- 
 duced his latest phase. Many would have found fault, 
 no doubt, even had it been "The Ambassadors" and 
 "The Golden Bowl" instead of "The Awkward Age" 
 and "The Sacred Fount." But their objection would 
 then have been the result of that conservatism which 
 demands that an artist continue to perform the tricks 
 to which he has accustomed the public. As it is, they 
 had some grounds for their feeling that their author was 
 growing perverse "in his old age." And there were many 
 who never outgrew the prejudice thus aroused, in spite 
 of the beautiful work he was yet to offer. 
 
VI 
 FULL PRIME 
 
 It is characteristic of James that his best work of all 
 should have come at the end of his career. His was 
 an art that had to be learned. It is in the first decade 
 of the present century that we reach the period of his 
 richest self-expression. Having mastered his technique, 
 having done with experiments, he launches at last upon 
 that series of novels which are but the natural and seem- 
 ingly unstudied application of his method, and the best 
 demonstration of its possibilities for art. ^ 
 
 We need not go over again the several points and 
 show how they are applied in these novels. What does 
 invite us is the opportunity of remarking on the beautiful 
 fruits of this method. It is in "The Dove," "The Am- 
 bassadors" and "The Golden Bowl" that we taste most 
 those esthetic gratifications which only such a system 
 can procure us. These are all structures of generous 
 dimensions; and they are in no case overcrowded with 
 tenants, who have thus ample room to turn around and 
 ample leisure to make themselves at home. In other 
 words, the process of selection and elimination makes 
 possible the fullest and most faithful treatment of what 
 is included. (The central idea is allowed to grow as steady 
 and unhampered as some great elm in New England 
 fields, reaching out on all sides to the sun, and showing 
 at last dense-foliaged and round, broad and symmetrical 
 in its green acre. Each particular situation, or historical 
 
256 The Method of Henry James 
 
 passage, which is deemed worthy of treatment at all, 
 receives the same full-rounded development ; each process 
 in the consciousness of the characters, chosen for illustra- 
 tion or for intrinsic interest, is followed closely from 
 step to step through all its course without abruptness, 
 haste or violence^ This smooth progress, free from jolts 
 I and jars, is a marked feature of the work of James in 
 I general, distinguishing it from the type of fiction that 
 ! ministers to our love of rapid movement, variety and 
 change. James has naturally a predilection for slow 
 movement, inappreciable change, for neat articulation 
 and orderly evolution. (jHe prefers likeness to difference, 
 the familiar to the novel, since in each case the former 
 has actually more to yield ta the understanding, is more 
 readily assimilated and ma'de a part of o ne's total im - 
 pressiog J 
 
 Ube amplitude of the record gives room for the 
 carrying out of those large operations, or manoeuvres, 
 which amount to nothing less than a revolution in some- 
 one's life. Such an operation is not an affair like going 
 to bed or taking breakfast, and is not to be disposed of 
 in any light and cavalier fashion. It is a matter of long 
 preparation, of many stages both in conception and execu- 
 tion, pit has a logic an d_a^seq uence^ jBJiiA-haKe-_tQ_be 
 followed throughout. In no part of James's work are 
 there such tine exarnples of these operations extensively 
 carried out as in these three late novelsTj 
 
 There is, for example, that of Maggie Verver in "The 
 Golden BowL" The first half of that novel sets forth 
 the circumstances by which is built up the strange and 
 wicked balance of relations which groups together Mag- 
 gie's husband and her father's wife. The second half is 
 devoted to the long process by which Maggie, becoming 
 
Full Prime 25J 
 
 aware of the situation, restores the proper and original 
 balance, and so wins back her husband, making him 
 hers for good. The earliest hint of any uneasiness on 
 Maggie's part is given just before the beginning of the 
 second part of the story in Mrs. Assingham's talk with 
 her husband. Mrs. Assingham's understanding of the 
 situation runs far ahead of Maggie's, and so when we 
 come to Maggie's, we have to start further back and 
 follow from their obscurest beginnings the double process 
 of her growing realization and her groping strategy. In 
 Maggie's case the realization of evil requires a large 
 allowance of time and endless rumination before it can 
 grow complete and assured. For it was just the trait 
 in Maggie that she could not and would not conceive 
 of evil that provoked the situation in which she had to 
 deal with it. So that with her the light breaks very 
 slowly; she will not let it come by more than gradual 
 degrees. 
 
 And her strategy is complicated and made difficult by 
 the character of her adversaries and allies. Amerigo 
 and Charlotte are, like Maggie herself, persons who can- 
 not tolerate violence and vulgarity. And the last thing 
 she wishes is to humiliate either of them. What she 
 wishes is to give them full opportunity to beat an honor- 
 able retreat. There can accordingly be none of those 
 explosions that clear the air and advance matters by 
 overleaping stages. No one gives away his hand, and 
 in every contact through a series of weeks, each party 
 is feeling his way with the greatest caution. It is some 
 time before Maggie comes to understand what it is that 
 her husband is "growing under cover of" his princely 
 reserve. What he is growing is evidently his policy of 
 joining forces with his wife by keeping Charlotte in the 
 
2^8 The Method of Henry James 
 
 dark as to Maggie's discovery. And we all have to wait 
 for Charlotte to see the light. It is long before she does 
 see that the game is up and reconciles herself to the 
 necessity for exile. It needs first those tense scenes of 
 confrontation with Maggie, in which the latter, all gen- 
 erous in her position of vantage, gives her opponent no 
 hold or opening for attack. 
 
 As for Mr. Verver, Maggie has at first no idea what 
 he knows. Her first instinct of all is to shield him from 
 this knowledge. His marriage was undertaken with the 
 idea of leaving his daughter freer to enjoy her husband; 
 and Maggie wouldn't for the world have him realize 
 the ironic issue of this undertaking. It turns out that 
 Mr. Verver's chief solicitude is similarly to shield Maggie 
 from the knowledge of his suffering. And when they are 
 both morally sure of the full enlightenment of one an- 
 other, their delicacy and consideration for one another's 
 dignity lead them to continue to the end their difficult 
 policy of bluff. 
 
 Meantime, obscurely, under all these moves and 
 counter-moves, is growing Amerigo's appreciation of 
 Maggie. And this is given ample room to spread and 
 reach the stature it shows at the final curtain. 
 
 Such a large slow evolution again is, in "The Dove," 
 the process by which Merton Densher gives himself up 
 to the designs of Kate upon Milly, wandering farther 
 and farther from the straight way, until the last moment- 
 ous visit to the dying woman, where comes to a head 
 the slow spirit of rebellion against a sinister manipula- 
 tion, and he takes the sharp, decisive turn back to truth 
 and decency. We need not trace out the course of this 
 operation nor of that other performed by Strether in 
 "The Ambassadors." The point is that only on this 
 
Full Prime 259 
 
 method, in this kind of novel, is it possible to conceive the 
 execution of any such broad continuous figure. It is 
 one thing to say, of such and such a change in a charac- 
 ter's outlook, that it came about; it is another thing to 
 give the reader the impression of its coming about. Every 
 movement of the plot cries out for elbow-room. Each plot 
 as a whole is like a fleet of warships demanding large 
 waters in which to form and reform and go through their 
 wide-sweeping manoeuvres. 
 
 It is a double undertaking. The situations must be 
 worked out completely in relation to the idea they make 
 palpable ; and they must be completely realized in scenes 
 felt as real and particular human experience. Here again 
 the leisurely fulness of treatment makes for our satis- 
 faction. The situations grow upon us. Familiarity itself 
 takes hold of us; and we- are further convinced by the 
 many little faithful touches, which are introduced as 
 quietly as in life itselfTl 
 
 We have time to get acquainted, for example, with the 
 special predicament of Maggie Verver. We have time to 
 sit with her before the drawing-room fire on that crucial 
 evening when she waited there for her husband's return 
 from Matcham. By her coming home for dinner she had 
 intimated — oh, so gently ! — ^that the shadow of a change 
 had touched her spirit, and that she was turning over a 
 new leaf in their domestic chronicle. In relations so 
 delicately balanced as theirs, even so slight a hint was 
 fraught with significance and peril; and we are made 
 to feel the varying shades of trepidation with which she 
 watches the slow hands of the clock. We share her sense 
 of the momentous nature of the "small shades of decision" 
 involved in her having left no message for Amerigo in 
 Eaton Square, her having dressed for dinner on coming 
 
26o The Method of Henry James 
 
 in. Most convincing is the touch of Maggie's anxiety 
 over the style of her gown, and her somewhat extended 
 reflections upon her inability really to satisfy the taste 
 of Charlotte in these matters of dress. "Yes, it was one 
 of the things she should go down to her grave without 
 having known — how Charlotte, after all had been said, 
 really thought her step-daughter looked under any sup- 
 posedly ingenious personal experiment. She had always 
 been lovely about the step-daughter's material braveries — 
 had done for her the very best with them; but there 
 had ever fitfully danced at the back of Maggie's head the 
 suspicion that these expressions were mercies, not judg- 
 ments, embodying no absolute but only a relative frank- 
 ness."^ Of course we need no reminder that this critic 
 before whom she stands in awe is none other than the 
 woman whom she is beginning to suspect of having ap- 
 propriated the love of her husband; and we realize 
 accordingly the high importance of these sartorial con- 
 siderations. 
 
 Another such occasion, to cite an example from "The 
 Ambassadors," is that in which Strether, in his river-side 
 pavilion, becomes aware of the presence of Chad and 
 Madame de Vionnet in a row-boat, and of being himself 
 discovered by the watchful eye of Madame de Vionnet. 
 It takes indeed but two paragraphs to give an account of 
 the moment that follows, but there is so much excitement 
 crowded into this one moment of hesitation and suspense 
 and the circumstances are so vividly imagined that we 
 realize it as a complete little drama. We see the figures 
 clearly in their physical relation and aspect, — Madame 
 de Vionnet with her pink parasol shifted as if to hide her 
 face, Chad in his shirt-sleeves and with his face turned 
 
 1 Vol. XXIV, pp. 13-14. 
 
Full Prime 261 
 
 away, having let his paddles go on receiving the mute \ 
 warning of his companion, and poor Strether staring pet- 
 rified in his pavilion. And we feel the iense indecision 
 of the two in the boat, the horror of the gentleman on 
 shore. It is of course the sensations of Strether that 
 make the scene live. 
 
 It was a sharp fantastic crisis that had popped up as if 
 in a dream, and it had had only to last the few seconds 
 to make him feel it as quite horrible. They were thus, 
 on either side, trying the other side, and all for some 
 reason that broke the stillness like some unprovoked 
 harsh note. It seemed to him again, within the limit, 
 that he had but one thing to do — ^to settle their common 
 question by some sign of surprise and joy. He hereupon 
 gave large play to these things, agitating his hat and his 
 stick and loudly calling out — a demonstration that 
 brought him relief as soon as he had seen it answered. 
 The boat, in mid-stream, still went a little wild — which 
 seemed natural, however, while Chad turned round, half 
 springing up; and his good friend, after blankness and 
 wonder, began gaily to wave her parasol. Chad dropped 
 afresh to his paddles and the boat headed round, amaze- 
 ment and pleasantry filling the air meanwhile, and relief, 
 as Strether continued to fancy, superseding mere 
 violence.* 
 
 ^ comparison with such work the narrative method 
 of much of our most-admired fiction seems conventional 
 and stlperficiai^ The characters are but lay-figures, 
 hastily furnished with cloaks and swords, with legs and 
 noses, from some theatrical wardrobe, and made to go 
 through certain movements which, by a pious convention 
 and the indulgence of the reader, are taken to mean 
 action and emotion. Each situation isi presented in 
 merest outline, with no attempt at filling in those intimate 
 
 2 Vol. XXII, pp. 2S7-2S8. 
 
262 The Method of Henry James 
 
 touches that give reality to any situation and dififerentiate 
 one situation from another. In James, we have the pleas- 
 ure of seeing the figures grow and fill until they reach 
 the rounded proportions of living beings. We watch the 
 situation opening up, depth behind depth, with calculated 
 distances and objects so placed as to give a sense of per- 
 spectiveTI Whatever is undertaken is done, and we are 
 satisfied: 
 
 ~ But if James does impress us, in this ultimate work, 
 with his adequacy of treatment, that goes, as I have said, 
 with the rigor of his elimination ; and the very omissions 
 contribute their element of beauty to the general effect. 
 Certain surfaces are closely and finely covered, while 
 others are left altogether blank, with the effect of wide 
 significant margins. Their white spaces are something to 
 rest and please the eye on their own account, as well as to 
 give an accent to the shaded greys and blacks of the por- 
 tions treated. There is given a pleasing sense of reserve- 
 power, of fertile ^unbroken ground, particularly desirable 
 for work that n>ight otherwise incur the reproach of an 
 \excess of cultivation. 
 
 (a) The Wings of the Dove 
 
 Naturally there are, even here, varying degrees of 
 effectiveness. The first of the three novels is distinctly 
 less satisfying than the others. The comparative want 
 of lucidity of "The Dove" has already been referred to 
 the less happy management of the point of view. But 
 that somewhat technical circumstance must be referred 
 back still further to a fault in conception. "The Dove" 
 seems not to have been so steadily and singly conceived 
 as its companion works. Hence the several "blocks" of 
 narrative, — ^those dealing primarily with Kate, those with 
 
Full Prime 263 
 
 Milly, those with Merton, and those of which one cannot 
 so readily declare with whom they deal primarily. These 
 give somewhat the impression of plates separately en- 
 graved, and while concerned with related subjects, 
 engraved each in its own style, thus leaving room for 
 uncertainty as to their being of the same set. They have 
 their carefully devised relation to each other, their refer- 
 ence back and forth ; and yet when one attempts a clear 
 statement of the general design running through the 
 series, one is somewhat at a loss. One is at a loss whether 
 to make the statement in terms of Kate's experience or 
 Milly's or Merton's ; and if the key lies in the community 
 or correspondence of experience of the three characters, 
 it is a key hard to turn in this lock. For the stubborn 
 fact remains that at times it is one, at times it is another 
 that is our main concern. The first book, dealing with 
 Kate's family background, the third book, showing us 
 Milly in the Alps, are both considerably out of focus; 
 and in the Venetian part of the story, Milly is not suffi- 
 ciently present in person, she has too passive a role, for 
 a fully satisfactory development of the contrast between 
 her and Kate which accounts for the final conversion of 
 Merton. The account we get of his final visit at the 
 palace is too roundabout to appease our legitimate appe- 
 tite for explanations. It may appeal more to our imagina- 
 tion, with its mystery so maintained, but our intelligence 
 remains unsatisfied. We make out in retrospect the 
 process by which Merton's heart and conscience were 
 alienated from his beloved ; we make out at last the set 
 of the main tide. But the surface is too much broken 
 up with choppy waves and cross-currents, for us to make 
 this out without more study than the artist can properly 
 demand. 
 
264 The Method of Henry James 
 
 (b) The Golden Bowl 
 
 There is no hint of confusion or unsteadiness about the 
 conception or execution of "The Golden Bowl." If the 
 two parts do show us two diflferent faces of the medal, 
 they are two faces that exactly correspond. And the 
 story could hardly have been told in any other way. It 
 was in the first part the story of the Prince, Maggie being, 
 by the very conditions of the plot, so innocently uncon- 
 scious of the situation that was growing up about her 
 devotion to her father. And, since the author did choose 
 to show us the second part through the eyes of Maggie, 
 we realize how much richer were the possibilities of that 
 alternative. She has now become the center of the web. 
 She is now the principal actor, since it has been so clearly 
 put up to her to bring them out of the labyrinth into 
 which she has led them. And it is the magnificent gener- 
 osity of her reactions, best exhibited from her own side, 
 that brings about the conversion of Amerigo. 
 
 Besides, and this is perhaps the great point, the change 
 of center from Amerigo to Maggie enables the author 
 to show us the situation dawning slowly on the mind first 
 of one then of another of the principal actors. This is not 
 a reduplication, since the position and the outlook of 
 the two are so different that it is, subjectively, a different 
 situation. But it makes possible that cumulative effect 
 that is so precious a result of this method, — ^that re- 
 inforcement by gradual accretion, by repeated insistence. 
 It is like the effect of a solemn theme in music, growing 
 in effectiveness through repetition in different keys. 
 With the deepening of our concern, the situation grows 
 at once more real and more urgent. It wraps us about 
 more and more vqluminously. It looms ever more solid 
 and portentous. It weighs upon us with ever increasing 
 
Full Prime 265 
 
 weight. It is here the method shows its possibihties for 
 drama. The peculiar strength of this book lies in the 
 long strain almost to agony of a struggle largely beneath 
 the surface and all the more terrible for the suppression 
 of word and gesture. This and the darkness and ugliness 
 investing the mind of Charlotte give its sombre tone, its 
 deep rich coloring to the work. 
 
 There is nothing sensational about this drama, since, 
 -for one thing, Maggie does not allow it to become for her 
 an affair of the nerves. There is nothing Poesque about 
 its sinister and mysterious notes. And yet there is some 
 suggestion of the earlier American writer in the strange 
 figures of speech and the romantic accessories that raise 
 the whole to a high imaginative level. It might be the 
 fantasy of Poe that conceived the images with which 
 Maggie represented to herself the domestic situation she 
 confronted. 
 
 This situation had been occupying for months and 
 months the very center of the garden of her Hfe, but 
 it had reared itself there like some strange tall tower of 
 ivory, or perhaps rather some wonderful beautiful but 
 outlandish pagoda, a structure plated with hard bright 
 porcelain, coloured and figured and adorned at the over- 
 hanging eaves with silver bells that tinkled ever so 
 charmingly when stirred by chance airs. . . . The thing 
 might have been, by the distance at which it kept her, a 
 Mahometan mosque, with which no base heretic could 
 take a liberty ; there so hung about it the vision of one's 
 putting off one's shoes to enter and even verily of one's 
 paying with one's Hfe if found there as an interloper. . . . 
 She had knocked . . . though she could scarce have said 
 whether for admission or for what ; she had applied her 
 hand to a cool smooth spot and had waited to see what 
 would happen. Something had happened ; it was as if a 
 sound, at her touch, after a little, had come back to her 
 
266 The Method of Henry James 
 
 from within; a sound sufficiently suggesting that her 
 approach had been noted.* 
 
 Somewhat in the Oriental vein again is the image in which 
 Maggie, on the night of their great encounter at Fawns, 
 pictures Charlotte hunting her as a splendid animal which 
 has broken its bars and is dangerously at large. Through- 
 out this scene the imagination of the author seems tuned 
 up to the pitch of excitement of the drama. It is here we 
 have the figure which may serve as the note for the whole 
 second part, where Maggie realizes "the horror of find- 
 ing evil seated all at its ease where she had only dreamed 
 of good ; the horror of the thing hideously behind, behind 
 so much trusted, so much pretended, nobleness, clever- 
 ness, tenderness."* 
 
 This richness of imagery matches that of the title, and 
 reinforces the effect made by the repeated appearance 
 of the golden bowl, with its insistent symbolism. And 
 these join with the special sumptuousness of the setting 
 to heighten the total effect of richness. So that if we feel 
 the color scheme of "The Golden Bowl" to be a sombre 
 one, it is as the pictures of Rembrandt or Velasquez are 
 sombre. It has a dark and lustrous splendor. 
 
 (c) The Ambassadors 
 
 \ "The Ambassadors" has the distinction of being at 
 once the simplest and the most complex in design of all 
 the studies of James, fit is simple in being_an uninter- 
 rupted record of the intellectual adventure of one man 
 itiThe'^ploration of one simple huma n situation^ The 
 problem of Strether draws its beautiful continuous line 
 
 ' ' ' J 
 
 3 Vol. XXIV, pp. 3-4. 
 
 * Id., p. 237. 
 
Full Prime 267 
 
 through the whole series of twelve books, a line gently 
 and at last decidedly curving, yet never broken or ob- 
 scuredX But the study is at the same time complex or ; 
 multiple in the number of aspects under which the sub- ! 
 ject may be viewed and named. 
 
 There is most obviously the particular problem of Chad 
 >I^ewsome, which forms the subject upon which the intelli- 
 gence of Strether is perpetually exercised, and which 
 determines the direction of all his "adventure." Yet 
 I should hardly call this the subject of the book : it is too 
 particular, too limited in its portee. The subject proper 
 is something more abstract : it is the matter of free intel- 
 lectual exploration in general, of the open mind in con- 
 trast to the mind closed and swaddled in prejudice and 
 narrow views. Under anothef aspect this is seen to be 
 again the inveterate contrast between the cosmopolitan 
 and the provincial, between the European and the Ameri- 
 can outlook. Strether's discovery of the open mind is 
 his discovery of Europe. It is Europe that teaches hinx 
 how many and how delicate considerations are involved 
 in the solution of his problem, — ^how much depends on 
 facts and "values" not to be lightly determined in ad- 
 vance. And if it is Europe that stands here for the open 
 mind, this Europe is more specifically embodied in the 
 most cosmopolitan of cities.. 
 
 Which makes it possible to say that the subject of this 
 study is Paris. It is Paris that gives its particular tone 
 and color to this work. It is hard to determine the respec- 
 tive parts in producing this effect of Paris material and 
 Paris spiritual. If the predominance of white in this 
 picture and the special quality of the white always bring 
 to mind the color of Manet, it may well be our own im- 
 pressions of the physical city upon which the author 
 
268 The Method of Henry James 
 
 draws largely for his effect. His descriptions are no 
 more extended, I think, than is usual in the later novels, 
 but we cannot escape the insistent note of this back- 
 ground, which is always so vividly and yet discreetly 
 present. The high balconies over animated streets, the 
 cheerful interiors of restaurant and cafe, domestic in- 
 teriors in varied but ever exquisite taste, the more stagey 
 decor of church and theatre, the light open spaces of 
 place and qum, all keep us reminded of the physical 
 brightness and amenity of Paris. 
 
 But one can hardly distinguish background and fore- 
 ground. There is not the least suggestion — such as one 
 may sometimes detect in the earlier novels laid in Paris — 
 of an artificial bringing together of characters and setting, 
 I of the scenery's being let down behind the figures. Ht is 
 one result of the method of James that his people seem 
 jto belong in their settingT] It has had time to grow up 
 ^about them ; they have had time to take on the coloration 
 |of their environment. Chad and Maria Gostrey and 
 Little Bilham, as well as Gloriani and Madame de Vion- 
 net, have quite the air of natives ; and we are invited to 
 behold the entire process of acclimatization of Lambert 
 Strether. 
 
 |The characters a re Paris spiritual. And as the physical 
 atmosphere is one of suffused and tempered light, so the 
 spiritual atmosphere is one of intelligence tempered with 
 jmaginationT) When Strether looks back so wistfully on 
 his earlier visit to Paris, when he regrets the subsequent 
 employments which have cheated him of "life," it is the 
 life of the intelligence that he has in mind. He thinks 
 of all the "movements" he has missed through his absence 
 from the capital of the world. He thinks of all the talk, 
 — talk freely and genially ranging without vulgar hin- 
 
Full Prime 269 
 
 drance over the fields of life and art, which in such a 
 view are not to be divorced. He has done the best he 
 could for himself in Woollett. He has attached himself 
 to the woman of highest intelligence and most imposing 
 character in the place. He has published a magazine 
 with a green cover. But he has not enjoyed there the 
 intellectual amenities for which he has himself such an 
 unusual aptitude. He has never found intelligence 
 tempered with imagination, intelligence made sociable. 
 The errand that takes him abroad proves to be his great 
 occasion for making up arrears. |The fortunate encounter 
 with Maria Gostrey opens his eyes to the possibilities of 
 discriminating thought on many subjects. Europe, on 
 her showing, appears to be an institution offering special 
 facilities for play of mind and imaginatioiU The problem 
 confronting him is not so bald and simple as he had 
 been led to believe. It is a subject calling for planned 
 and gradual stages of approach. It has as many aspects^ 
 as a problem in metaphysics, and must be considered 
 again and again from one side and another. It is a 
 fortress of many circumvallations, or a Jericho that must 
 be seven times encircled before its walls will tumble to the 
 blowing of his trumpet. He must not let himself be 
 bullied or hurried into a decision by his own interest or 
 by any moral prejudice or anxiety. He may allow him- 
 self — what is, we feel, the luxury he most craves — ^that 
 clear impartiality of consideration which is so congenial 
 to the Gallic spirit. 
 
 If there is one of his characters whom we are tempted 
 to identify with Henry James himself, it is Lambert 
 Strether. His role calls more than any other for this 
 brooding exercise of a mind detached upon the human 
 spectacle. His maturity and independence, his sympa- 
 
zjo The Method of Henry James 
 
 thetic and discriminating quality of mind, his patience and 
 the unfailing satisfaction he takes in the interpretation 
 of his subject, all make us think again and again of the 
 author of these novels and the man who sat for Mr. 
 Sargent's portrait. [And in this story, sn givpn shappji y 
 th e intelli p ^ence of, this_jd^ aract er, J aiBes tashioned for 
 ^huSelFlhe most perfect vehicle for his own habit of 
 rfeflection. He is himself, like Strether, profoundly moral 
 in his sentiment. But he and his creature both seem to 
 feel that, if the intelligence is to be us ed for the eventual 
 benefit of t he moral pa ssion, it must not be warpeTby any 
 moral pressure; it must be left absolutely free to reach 
 its own conclusionsTJ And for both of them the greatest 
 -of ■ pTeasiifies^s that extended rumination over life by 
 which its true values may come 'to be appreciated, (^he 
 I tone of "The Ambassadors" is accordingly the nearest 
 we ever come to the very tone of Henry James. It is the 
 one of large and sociable speculation upon human nature, 
 a\tone at once grave and easy, light and yet deep, earnest 
 and yet free from anxiety, fit is the tone^ most of all, 
 of the leisurely thinker, well-assured that maturity can 
 be the, product only of tim^And what he offers us are 
 fruits well ripened in the sUn of his thought. 
 
CHARACTERS 
 
 Certain characters are referred to, some of them rather 
 frequently, without naming the stories in which they 
 appear. The following partial list may be helpful to 
 readers who are not familiar with all the stories : 
 
 Isabel Archer, "The Portrait of a Lady." 
 
 Mrs. Assingham, "The Golden Bowl." 
 
 Nanda Brookenham, "The Awkward Age." 
 
 Kate Croy, "The Wings of the Dove." 
 
 Merton Densher, "The Wings of the Dove." 
 
 Mrs. Gereth, "The Spoils of Poynton." 
 
 Maria Gostrey, "The Ambassadors." 
 
 Rowland Mallett, "Roderick Hudson." 
 
 Mitchy, "The Awkward Age." 
 
 Gabriel Nash, "The Tragic Muse." 
 
 Christopher Newman, "The American." 
 
 Hyacinth Robinson, "The Princess Casamassima." 
 
 Charlotte Stant, "The Golden Bowl." 
 
 Lambert Strether, "The Ambassadors." 
 
 Milly Theale, "The Wings of the Dove." 
 
 Maggie Verver, "The Golden Bowl." 
 
 Fleda Vetch, "The Spoils of Poynton." 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 
 
 A comprehensive bibliography of James is not called 
 for within the scope of this work. There are already in 
 print two satisfactory bibliographies, up to and including 
 the year 1905: one, compiled by Mr. Frederick Allen 
 King, included as an appendix in Miss Elizabeth Luther 
 Gary's "The Novels of Henry James" (Putnam, 1905) ; 
 the other, by Mr. Le Roy Phillips, more complete and 
 making up an entire volume, published in 1906 by Hough- 
 ton, MifHin in this country and by Gonstable in England. 
 There is also a list of the first editions of publications 
 in book form, both English and American, appended to 
 the volume on Henry James in the "Writers of the Day" 
 series (Holt, 1916) written by Miss Rebecca West. It is 
 sufficient for the purpose of this study to include a list 
 of books by Henry James which have appeared since 
 1905, not including reprints, together with a chronological 
 list of all the novels, indicating their first appearance in 
 magazines and in book form, both in America and in 
 England. This latter will be of assistance to the reader 
 in tracing the progress of James in working out his 
 "method." In both lists I include certain books not yet 
 published in America at the time of printing. I have had 
 frequent occasion to mention the New York Edition of 
 the Novels and Tales published during 1907-1909 by 
 Scribner in this country and by Macmillan in England. 
 Besides the studies of James by Miss Gary and Miss 
 West already mentioned, there is one by Mr. Ford Madox 
 Hueffer, Seeker, 1914, and Dodd, 1916. "French Poets 
 
Bibliographical Note 2^3 
 
 and Novelists" and "Partial Portraits," volumes of 
 critical essays by James, were first published by Mac- 
 millan in, respectively, 1878 and 1888. 
 
 List of Books by James Published since 1905 
 
 The American Scene. 1907. Harper, New York ; Chap- 
 man and Hall, London. 
 
 Views and Reviews. Introduction by Le Roy Phillips. 
 1908. Ball Publishing Co., Boston. 
 
 Italian Hours. Illustrated by Joseph Pennell. 1909. 
 Houghton, Mifflin, Boston and New York; Heine- 
 mann, London. 
 
 The Finer Grain. 1910. Scribner, New York ; Methuen, 
 London. This volume includes the following tales : 
 The Velvet Glove, Mora Montravers, A Round of 
 Visits, Crapy Cornelia, The Bench of Desolation. 
 
 The Outcry. 1911. Scribner, New York; Methuen, 
 London. 
 
 The Henry James Year Book. Selected and arranged by 
 Evel)m Garnaut Smalley. 1911, R. G. Badger, Bos- 
 ton; 1912, Dent, London. 
 
 A Small Boy and Others. 1913. Scribner, New York ; 
 Macmillan, London. 
 
 Notes of a Son and Brother. 1914. Scribner, New 
 York; Macmillan, London. 
 
 Notes on Novelists : with some other notes. 1914. Scrib- 
 ner, New York; Dent, London. 
 
 Pictures and other Passages from Henry James. Selected 
 by Ruth Head. 1916. Chatto and Windus. 
 
 The Ivory Tower. 1917. Collins, London; Scribner, 
 New York. 
 
 The Sense of the Past. 1917. Collins, London; Scrib- 
 ner, New York. 
 
2'^4 ^^^ Method of Henry James 
 
 The Middle Years. 1917. Collins, London; Scribner, 
 New York. 
 
 Chronological List of the Novels of James. 
 
 (Stars are attached to the titles of novels not included 
 in the New York Edition. The last three appeared too 
 late for inclusion ; in the case of all the others, exclusion 
 from the canon must have been deliberate.) 
 
 1871. *Watch and Ward. Atlantic Monthly, August 
 to December. 
 
 — 1878, Houghton, Osgood (present pub- 
 lisher Houghton, Mifflin). 
 
 1875. Roderick Hudson. Atlantic Monthly, January 
 
 to December. 
 
 — 1876, James R. Osgood (present publisher 
 Houghton, Mifflin), Boston; 1879, Macmil- 
 lan, London. 
 
 1876-77. The American. Atlantic Monthly, June, 1876, 
 to May, 1877. 
 
 — 1877, James R. Osgood (present publisher 
 Houghton, Mifflin), Boston; Ward, Lock, 
 London. 
 
 1878. *The Europeans. Atlantic Monthly, July to 
 October. 
 
 — 1878, Houghton, Osgood (present pub- 
 lisher Houghton, Mifflin), Boston; Macmil- 
 lan, London. 
 
 1879-80. *Confidence. Scribner's Monthly, August, 1879, 
 to January, 1880. 
 
 — 1880, Houghton, Osgood (present pub- 
 lisher Houghton, Mifflin), Boston; Chatto 
 and Windus, London. 
 
Bibliographical Note 275 
 
 1880. *Washmgton Square. Cornhill Magazine, June 
 to November, and Harper's Monthly, July 
 to December. 
 
 — 1881, Harper, New York; the same, to- 
 gether with The Pension Beaurepas and A 
 Bundle of Letters, two volumes, Macmillan, 
 London. 
 4880-81. The Portrait of a Lady. Macmillan's Maga- 
 zine, October, 1880, to November, 1881, and 
 Atlantic Monthly, November, 1880, to De- 
 cember, 1881. 
 
 — 1881, three volumes, Macmillan, London; 
 one volume, Houghton, Mifflin, Boston and 
 New York. 
 
 1885-86. *The Bostonians. Century Magazine, Febru- 
 ary, 1885, to February, 1886. 
 — 1886, three volumes, Macmillan, London 
 and New York. 
 
 1885-86. The Princess Casamassima. Atlantic Monthly, 
 September, 1885, to October, 1886. 
 — 1886, three volumes, Macmillan, London 
 and New York. 
 
 1889-90. The Tragic Muse. Atlantic Monthly, January, 
 1889, to May, 1890. 
 
 — 1890, two volumes, Houghton, Mifflin, 
 Boston and New York ; three volumes, Mac- 
 millan, London. 
 
 1896. The Spoils of Poynton. This novel appeared 
 
 under the title of "The Old Things" in the 
 Atlantic Monthly, April to October. 
 — 1897, Houghton, Mifflin, Boston and New 
 York; Heinemann, London. 
 
2^6 The Method of Henry James 
 
 1896. *The Other House. One volume, Macmillan, 
 
 New York; two volumes, Heinemann, Lon- 
 don. 
 
 1897. What Maisie Knew. The Chap Book, Jan- 
 
 uary 15 to August 1, and The New Review, 
 February to July. 
 
 — 1897, Herbert S. Stone, Chicago and New 
 York; Heinemann, London. 
 1898-99. The Awkward Age. Harper's Weekly, Octo- 
 ber 1, 1898, to January 7, 1899. 
 — 1899, Harper, New York; Heinemann, 
 London. 
 
 1901. *The Sacred Fount. Scribner, New York; 
 
 Methuen, London. 
 
 1902. The Wings of the Dove. Two volumes, Scrib- 
 
 ner, New York; one volume, Constable, 
 London. 
 
 1903. The Ambassadors. North American Review, 
 
 January. to December. 
 — 1903, Harper, New York ; Methuen, Lon- 
 don. 
 
 1904. The Golden Bowl. Two volumes, Scribner, 
 
 New York; one volume, Methuen, London. 
 1911. *The Outcry. Scribner, New York ; Methuen, 
 
 London. 
 1917. *The Ivory Tower. Collins, London ; Scribner, 
 
 New York. 
 1917. *The Sense of the Past. Collins, London; 
 
 Scribner, New York. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Novels, tales, books of criticism and reminiscence, referred 
 to, alluded to, or quoted. Figures in italics refer to passages 
 in which-.the story is taken up for particular" 'cojisideration. 
 
 The Ambassadors : 5, IS, 16, 17, 
 21-2, 28 footnote 3, 30, 34. 46, 
 48, 51-4, 56, 63, 65, 6Z, 7i, 
 77-8, 8^4, 85, 94, 97, 101-2, 
 106, 107, 113^.121, 135, 138, 
 140jJL144, 1Ul}70, 190, 193- 
 4, 204, 245, 2S'2, 254, 255-6, 
 260-1, 266-70. 
 
 The Altar of the Dead : 234.^ 
 
 The American: 5, 42, 70, 73-4, 
 
 |1>11S, 120, 121, 134, 150, 190, 
 199-203, 254. 
 
 The Aspern P^rs": 69, 190. 
 
 The Author of Beltraffio : 69. 
 
 The Awkward Age: 19-20, 28 
 footnote 3, 60-1, 85, 87-90, 
 100-1, 123, 124, 127, 140-1, 
 150, 158-9, 197, 201, 228, 235, 
 236, 237, 343-9, 250, 251, 254. 
 
 The Beast in the Jungle : 70. 
 
 The Beldonald Holbein : 69, 71, 
 151. 
 
 The Bench of Desolation: 70, 
 172, 178-9, 215 footnote 21. 
 
 Benvolio: 186. 
 
 The Bostonians: 3, S, 42, 73, 
 222, 324-6. 
 
 Broken Wings: 123. 
 
 The Chaperon : 234. 
 
 Confidence: 4, 205, 223-4. 
 
 The Coxon Fund: 31 footnote 
 7. 
 
 Crapy Cornelia: 70, 170 foot- 
 note 4. 
 
 Daisy Miller: 3, 14, 35, 157, 
 254. 
 
 The Death of the Lion: 31 
 footnote 7, 69. 
 
 De Grey : a Romance : 184-5. ** 
 
 Eugene Pickering: 185. 
 
 Europe: 69, 71. 
 
 The Europeans: 4, 222, 223, 
 226-7. 
 
 The Figure in the Carpet: 69, 
 145-8. 152-5. 
 
 Flickerbridge : 156. 
 
 The Friends of the Friends:*^ 
 185. 
 
 Gabrielle de Bergerac: 186. 
 
 The Ghostly Rental: 185. "" 
 
 The Golden Bowl: 4, 5, 14, 29- 
 30, 35, 46-7, 48, 63, 67-8, 71, 
 78-9, 85-6, 88-90, 93, 95-7, 120, 
 123, 125, 127-8, 135, 144, 160, 
 170, 197, 205-6, 210, 219, 235, 
 251, 254, 255-60, 264-6. 
 
 In a Cage: 126. 
 
278 
 
 Index 
 
 The Ivory Tower: 2 footnote 
 
 1, 168 footnote 3. 
 ,The Last of the Valerii: 187, 
 
 189-90. 
 The Liar: 69. 
 A Light Man: 167, 180. 
 Madame de Mauves : 70, 13S, 
 
 142-3, 167, 190. 
 A Madonna of the Future : 68, 
 
 167, 186, 187. 
 Master Eustace: 173-4, 179. 
 Maud-Evelyn: 40-1. 
 My Friend Bingham : 177-9. 
 The Next Time: 31 footnote 
 
 3. 
 Notes on Novelists: 14, 136-8. 
 Notes of a Son and Brother; 
 
 17 footnote 8. 
 The Other House: 94, 97, 236 
 
 footnote 3. 
 The Outcry: 4, 60-1, 94, 97, 
 
 238, 249-50. 
 Pandora: 69. - 
 Partial Portraits: 113, 125-6, 
 
 133-4, 143. 
 A Passionate^ Pilgrim: 68, 120, 
 
 167, 186-7. 
 The Patagonia: 69. 
 The Pension Beaurepas : 68. 
 Poor Richard: 175-6. 
 The Portrait of a Lady: 4, 12, 
 
 14, 17, 23 footnote 14, 35,''42, 
 
 74, 88-90, 93, 95, 97, 103, 135, 
 
 138, ISO, 152-4, 157-9, 170, 
 
 190, 204, 205-11, 212, 214, 216, 
 
 219, 222, 239, 254. 
 
 The Princess Casamassima: 4, 
 5, 42-3, 97, 123, 141, 157, 170, 
 181, 190, 197, 21^15, 216, 219, 
 228. ' ^ 
 
 The Private Life : 70. 
 
 The Pupil: 234. 
 aa-he Real Right Thing: 185. 
 
 The Real Thing: 3, 15, 16. 
 
 Roderick Hudson : 4, 5, 42, 64, 
 67, 73-6, 94, 103, 115, 140, 160, 
 167, 186, 190, ipj-p, 201, 222, 
 234. 
 
 The Romance of Certain Old 
 Clothes: 184, 186. 
 
 The Sacred Fount: 3, 5 foot- 
 note 4, 43-6, 86, 87-8, 127, 
 237, 250-4. 
 
 The Sense of the Past: 2 foot- 
 note 1. 
 
 A Small Boy and Others : 169, 
 231. 
 
 The Spoils of Poynton : 3, 4, 5, 
 IS, 56, 61, 65-6, 84, 88-93, 95- 
 7, 108, 113, 114, 115, 120, 132, 
 140-1, 150, 152, 157-9, 170, 
 204, 210, 219, 228, 233-6, 237, 
 239. 
 
 The Story in It: 18-9, 152. 
 
 The Story of a Year: 173. 
 
 The Sweetheart of Monsieur 
 Briseux: 187. 
 
 The Tragic Muse: 4, 5, 32-3, 
 36 footnote 15, 42, 66, 93, 97, 
 150-2, 157, 169, 178, 216-20, 
 234, 254. 
 
 Travelling Companions: 187-9. 
 
Index 
 
 279 
 
 ^f^a Turn of the Screw: 185, 
 
 234. 
 The Two Faces: 69. 
 Views and Reviews : 27, 32. 
 Washington Square: 3, 94, 205, 
 
 222, 223, 228-32. 
 Watch and Ward : 181-3. 
 What Maisie Knew: 28-9, 62, 
 
 64 footnote 15, 67, 71, 113, 
 135, 144, 236, 237, 238-42, 251. 
 The Wings of the Dove: 5, 14, 
 17, 20-1, 29-30, 33-4, 35, 47-9, 
 51, 60, 66-7, 68, 78, 85, 94, 97, 
 105, 107-8, 120, 127-30, 135, 
 139-41, 144, 152, 158-9, 169- 
 70, 181, 190, 255-6, 258-60, 
 262-3.